‘Keep birth database to curb female foeticide’

The female child is entitled to enjoy equal rights that a male child is allowed to have: Bench

Noting that the “female child is entitled to enjoy equal rights that a male child is allowed to have,” the Supreme Court issued a series of directions to clamp down on the crime of female foeticide, including an all-India database to keep tabs on the number and gender of new-borns.

In a judgment, a Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and S.K. Singh said the menace of female foeticide corroded human values and the constitutional identity of a girl child “cannot be mortgaged to any kind of social or other concept that has developed or is thought of.”

“When a female foetus is destroyed through artificial means, which is legally impermissible, the dignity of life of a woman to be born is extinguished. It corrodes the human values,” Justice Misra, who wrote the judgment, observed.

The Bench passed 16 directions to ensure immediate and effective implementation of the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act and the Rules framed thereunder.

All the States and the Union Territories in India shall maintain a centralised database of civil registration records from all registration units so that information can be made available from the website regarding the number of boys and girls being born.

“The information that shall be displayed on the website shall contain birth information for each district, municipality, corporation or gram panchayat so that a visual comparison of boys and girls born can be immediately seen,” the Supreme Court observed.

Incentive schemes

It also directed that States and Union Territories, which do not have any incentive schemes for the girl child, shall frame the same. Noting that courts hearing cases of female foeticide should expedite hearing, the court requested the Chief Justices of High Courts to constitute a committee of three judges to periodically oversee the progress of these cases.

“The present generation is expected to be responsible to the posterity and not to take such steps to sterilise the birth rate in violation of law ... dropping of sex ratio still remains a social affliction and a disease,” the court held.

The court passed the verdict while disposing of a PIL by NGO Voluntary Health Association of Punjab.