INTRODUCTION
In X & Anr. v. State of Kerala & Ors., the Kerala High Court on 3rd June, 2026, ruled that procedural bumps in the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, do not take away the basic right of identity available to the child as per Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Justice P.V. Kunhikrishnan, in his role as the special judge, directed the authorities to add the name of the biological father and correct the name of the child in the birth register of a girl conceived through IVF. The order emphasizes a more general constitutional concept: When a child’s dignity for life is going to be marred by very strict statutory procedures, the courts should read the law with a human heart instead of ruling in accordance with the letter of the law.
BACKGROUND
Through IVF, the sperm of the second petitioner was used, who then was part of the relationship with the first petitioner; the first petitioners’ first daughter was born in 2012. The father was not present at the birth, therefore the father’s column was left blank in the birth register. The couple later wed in 2018 and the birth certificate of their second child lists the parents’ names and their marriage. The Family Court had already recorded a settlement wherein it had recognised the second petitioner as the biological father and given permission for corresponding corrections in the birth register, but the Panchayat had refused to make the correction, stating that there was no provision in the Act of 1969 for such addition.
KEY POINTS
- The Court noted that the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 does not provide a specific provision to record the father’s name or to correct the child’s name once the child has been registered to a single mother, but in suitable situations, the High Court’s jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution can be used to achieve a fuller justice.
- In the backdrop of Anitha C. v. State of Kerala, (2026) 2 KHC 313, the Bench reiterated that even in the absence of any such provisions in the statutes, constitutional courts can intervene in extraordinary situations where a child’s welfare and dignity are at stake.
- In invoking Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and Mr Bumble’s observation, the Court noted that some of the laws have not changed and that a blank space in a birth register, the first document that a person encounters in the world, can wound a child just as much as words.
- The Bench also cited the Mahabharata’s Karna, who is constantly plagued by a sense of doubt about his parentage, especially when he has a younger sibling whose birth certificate states the correct names of both parents as opposed to the incorrect birth certificate of his elder sibling.
- As the issue involved was not a paternity contest, but only a request to verify the undisputed parentage of the child, the Court did not consider the anomaly to be justifiable and saw no reason for the State to support it. It dispensed with the Panchayat’s refusal and ordered to add the father’s name and a middle name in the margins of the child’s name in the birth certificate so that a new birth certificate could be issued within 30 days.
- This judgment follows the Supreme Court’s ruling in ABC v. State (NCT of Delhi), (2015) 10 SCC 1 which had held that dignity enshrined in Article 21 included two separate rights: the right of an unwed mother to privacy and the right of a child to know his/her parents.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
It’s not an unusual case of judicial innovation, either. In a previous case in 2026, the same Bench allowed the substitution of a legally recognised husband’s name on a birth certificate by the name of the biological father, noting that men also have dignity, pride and a social identity of their own to be recognised in the certificate. The High Court has also instructed the authorities in Kozhikode to record the names of a transgender couple as ‘parents’ on its child’s birth certificate, a practice of providing a purposive interpretation to birth-registration statutes which reflects lived family realities.
As for parentage correction, scholars on the subject of assisted reproduction technology law point out that the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act 2021 and the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act 2021 deal primarily with prospective procedures and registration of clinics, and provide little guidance to the courts about how to correct parentage records for children born prior to the enacting. The commentators have raised a number of arguments that this lacuna in the legislation means that courts are the main redressive forum for enforcing ART-conceived children’s rights to identity and have urged changes to the Registration of Births and Deaths Act to allow for administrative correction without resort to the writ jurisdiction.
CONCLUSION
The Kerala High Court has upheld that procedure serves justice and not checks it in granting a constitutional right to identity to a child whose government had failed to provide her with an administrative identity. The judgment clearly conveys to the authorities concerned with registration in the country that where there is no doubt about a child’s parentage and both the parents have accepted it, the silence of the bureaucracy cannot leave a permanent, humiliating mark on the most fundamental public document related to the birth of a child.
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WRITTEN BY: ARNAV NAIK
