After a woman challenged the procedural necessity of disclosing the identity of the father and issuing notice to him on a plea seeking sole guardianship of the child by the unwed mother, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no need for the consent of the father in giving guardianship of a child to an unwed mother.
The apex court bench headed by Justice Vikramajit Sen made this statement while recalling the earlier order of a guardianship court and asking it to re-examine the plea by the unwed mother seeking guardianship of the child without issuing notice to the father. He said that the lower courts, including the high court, lost sight of the issue that was before them and they decided the matter without taking into account the welfare of the child.
The mother had argued that the man stayed with her barely for two months and did not even know the existence of the child. After the woman's plea was rejected by a trial court and the High Court, she filed an appeal in the Supreme Court in 2011. She pointed out that if identifying the father is not mandatory on a passport application form, this can be allowed in a guardianship case, too, under “exceptional circumstances”.
The judgement by the Supreme Court has been largely well received with many seeing it as a sign of progress in the Indian judiciary.
