The Centre has agreed to make a one-time exception in the country’s adoption laws and allow a German couple to adopt their surrogate children and return to their country.
After the assurance on Wednesday, a Supreme Court bench asked the Central Adoption Resources Agency (Cara) to start the process of permitting Jan Balaz and Susan Lohle adopt two-year-olds Nicholas and Leonard and taken them to Germany.
Balaz and Lohle have been litigating for Indian citizenship to the children, born in February 2008 through surrogate mother Martha Immanual Khristy. Earlier, the couple told the court that they were willing to go for an inter-country adoption.
On Wednesday, a bench of justices GS Singhvi and Asok Kumar
Ganguly granted Cara four weeks to consider as a one-time measure Balaz and Lohle’s plea to adopt the twins on humanitarian grounds.
On February 25, 2009, the apex court had asked the central adoption agency to consider granting adoption rights as a ‘special case’ to the German couple. The court had passed the direction after the counsel for the union government told the bench that under existing rules, the German couple cannot be granted adoption rights as such a privilege is available only if children are abandoned by the biological parents. The government said the twins were born through a surrogate mother and there was no provision for inter-country adoption for such children.
In 2008, the couple had begun their quest for Indian citizenship for the twins. They first went to the passport authorities, who turned down their plea. After that, they moved Gujarat high court.
On November 11 last year, the high court directed the Centre to grant citizenship by saying that since the twins were born to a surrogate Indian mother they were entitled to the country’s citizenship. Aggrieved, the Centre filed an appeal in the apex court.
The Centre had taken the stand that under the Citizenship Act, 1955, since the commissioning parents were a German couple, the children cannot be treated as Indian citizens and hence there was no question of giving them passports.
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