Poor sex ratio: Put birth record of girls online, says Supreme Court to states, UTs

NEW DELHI: No individual, group or organisation can discriminate against a woman and she is entitled to free choices like any man within the constitutional parameters, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday while expressing concern over the worsening sex ratio in the country

A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra directed all state governments and union territories to keep records of all births of boys and girls and display the figures on a website for information of the public.

“… it be stated with certitude and without allowing any room for any kind of equivocation or ambiguity, the perception of any individual or group or organisation or system treating a woman with inequity, indignity, inequality or any kind of discrimination is constitutionally impermissible. The historical perception has to be given a prompt burial,” the court said.

“To think that a woman should think what a man or a society wants her to think tantamount to slaughtering her choice, and definitely a humiliating act. When freedom of free choice is allowed within constitutional and statutory parameters, others cannot determine the norms as that would amount to acting in derogation of law.”

A society that treats man and woman with equal dignity shows the reflections of a progressive and civilized society, it said. “Decrease in the sex ratio is a sign of colossal calamity and it cannot be allowed to happen.” In social terms, the bench, said, female feticide means mothers who expected to mother their children kill them instead.

“Law prohibits it; scriptures forbid it; philosophy condemns it; ethics deprecate it, morality decries it and social science abhors it,” the bench, also comprising Justice Shivakirti Singh, observed.

It directed the government to hold effective awareness campaigns through the All India Radio and Doordarshan and not carry “cosmetic” campaigns.