Father’s name not must for passport: HC

The petition was moved by the Naraina-based mother of two girls,who got a divorce in 2007. She told the court that her husband had left her barely four months after the birth of her younger daughter and had not checked on the children since.

When the RPO refused her daughter a passport,she decided to take the fight to court.

Holding that the father’s name was not mandatory in every case,Justice S Muralidhar said there were certain exceptional circumstances where a person,as a matter of justice and fair play,must be allowed to decide whether he/she wants to mention the father’s name.

Among a few such circumstances named by the court are: passport application of a child by a divorced mother,a case where the father has severed all contact with the child or when the father is unknown (likely in cases of birth due to sexual assault).

According to Justice Muralidhar,in all such and similar cases,an insistence on mentioning the father’s name was not just and an affidavit sworn before a magistrate furnishing the reason for not indicating the name was good enough.

“In these cases,the name of the father should be left blank and should not be entered in the passport without his written consent. As admission by a woman of the birth of a child out of wedlock invites social stigma,it may be presumed that rarely would she tell a lie in this regard,” noted the court,which also referred to the passport office’s 1999 rules that had made such conditions less strict.

Justice Muralidhar also called for a necessary check on allowing all such applications “to safeguard against cases of abduction or kidnapping”.

“The officer should insist on the affidavit,supported by a birth certificate from a hospital or the Registrar of Births and Deaths or a municipality,” he said.

Justice Muralidhar directed the RPO to hand over the passport to the mother,who had moved the petition through advocate Tarun Goomber,within two weeks of her submitting the affidavit at their office.