ABC Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Pursuant to our order and direction dtd. 9/10/2023, the Office of the District Medical & Health Officer (Chairperson District Medical Board), Medchal-Malkajgiri-District has submitted its report dtd. 11/10/2023 after examining the petitioner herein. On perusal of the said report, it would be useful to extract the following portions of the Report:

(2.) We have perused the Pelvic ultrasound report from Lucid Medical Diagnostics dtd. 29/4/2022 which states that both uterus as well as Ovaries are not visualised. We have also relied on the 3T-MRI whole Abdomen report of Mrs. ABC dtd. 20/2/23 which states that "uterus is not visualised", "Both Ovaries are not visualised." We have also examined the documents submitted by Mrs. ABC in the process of applying and obtaining various permissions for ART and Surrogacy and after careful examination of all documents it has lead us to opine that since Mrs. ABC has absent Ovaries and absent Uterus, hence she cannot produce her own Eggs/Oocytes.

(3.) In the above backdrop, we have heard learned Senior Counsel Mr. Sanjay Jain for the petitioner Mrs. ABC and learned A.S.G. Ms. Aishwarya Bhati for the respondents. During the course of submissions, our attention was drawn to Sec. 2(r), 2(zd), (zg) and Ss. 4(ii)(a) and 4(iii)(a)(I) of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 (for short, "Surrogacy Act") as well as Rule 14(a) read with Rule 7 as well as the portion of Form 2, namely Consent of the Surrogate Mother and Agreement for Surrogacy and Paragraph 1(d) thereof of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Rules, 2022 (for short, "Surrogacy Rules"). For the sake of immediate reference the same are extracted as under: