The Kerala High Court has held that a person has the right to include his mother’s name alone in the birth certificate, identity certificates and other documents.
The court made the ruling recently while allowing a petition filed by a man seeking to remove his father’s name from the birth register maintained by the office of the Registrar of Birth and Deaths, Pathanamthitta municipality, and include his mother’s name in the certificate. The petition was filed by the man and his mother. The woman had conceived the child when she was a minor from an unidentified person. Therefore the father’s name happened to be recorded differently in different documents.
The court while quoting various Supreme Court rulings in this regard observed that the child of an unwed mother was also a citizen of the country, and nobody could infringe upon any of his/her fundamental rights, which were guaranteed by the Constitution. The children of unwed mothers and the children of rape victims could also live in this country with the fundamental rights of privacy, liberty, and dignity.
The court also quoted the Kerala High Court order directing the government to bring out a separate form, which does not contain a field requiring the name and other details of one’s father.
“We want a society with no such characters like “Karna,” who curses his life because of the insult he faced for not knowing the whereabouts of his parents. We want real brave “Karnas’ who was the real hero and fighter in Mahabharata. Our Constitution and the constitutional courts will protect all of them and the new age Karnas can live like any other citizen with dignity and pride,” the court added.
