Tavishi Perara’s birth certificate will read, probably for the first time in India, as ‘child without father’ because of the decision made by Madras high court to keep the column blank.
However, the sense of relief for the child’s mother Mathumitha Ramesh did not come easy as she had to go through two rounds of litigation to ensure her daughter got a birth certificate without the father’s name, mentioned TOI report.
After being separated from her husband Charan Raj by mutual consent, in April 2017, Mathumitha’s daughter Tavishi was born with the help of a semen donor through intrauterine fertility treatment.
However, the Trichy Corporation Commissioner issued a certificate showing that one Manish Madanpal Meena as the child’s father, as he has helped Mathumitha while she was going through her treatment, mentioned the report. Later, she approached the authorities seeking the removal of Meena’s name but it was rejected on the grounds that errors in a name can be rectified but cannot be removed.
Mathumitha moved to HC, assailing September 4, 2017, which directed the officials seek into the matter and rectify the certificate. Rejecting the application, the revenue divisional officer said that the registrar of births and deaths is the department which settles the issue.
Feeling hopeless, she went to the court again, where her counsel argued that in the certificate, Meena’s name had “erroneously crept.”
But in a strange twist, both Mathumitha’s separated husband Charan Raj and Meena had filed different affidavits saying that neither of them was the Tavishi’s father.
Mathumitha’s demand was granted by Justice M S Ramesh after it was proved that she got pregnant through intrauterine fertility treatment with donated semen. Ramesh then directed the chief health officer of Trichy Corporation to remove Meena’s name from the father’s column and he further restrained the officer from demanding the name of the father for the purpose of filling the column.
“I have made these observations consciously in order to restrain the chief health officer from insisting on any other name in the birth certificate on the father’s name column,” the Judge said to TOI while posting the case to June 11 for compliance of the order.