New Delhi: The external affairs ministry on Friday said that the government is totally against both gender discrimination and insensitivity and distanced itself from the purported comments of a lawyer representing the ministry that an unwed mother must file an affidavit stating “how she has conceived” and “if she was raped”.
According to media reports from Mumbai, the lawyer appearing in a passport application case in the Mumbai HC also purportedly said that the single mother must also mention in the affidavit why she does not want the father’s name included while applying for a passport for her child.
“I am shocked and appalled if you think that these could be the government’s views,” the MEA spokesperson said. The ministry said that it did not know what exactly had happened in HC even as the Union government is looking into the matter to find out whether the lawyermade the reported comments and will also ascertain the ‘version’ of the lawyer.
But the MEA spokesperson made it clear that if the media report from Mumbai was correct, such utterances are contrary to everything that the government stands for.
Any single parent applying for a passport application has to give only two documents a birth certificate and an affidavit signed before a judicial magistrate. He said that in case of a single mother, the law provides that she can leave the column blank that asks for the father’s name.
