Three-member panel must look into female foeticide complaints, says HC

A multi-member body would serve the object and reasons more effectively for which the Act has been enacted. An individual member body may defer from the aim which the act sought to achieve. HIGH COURT

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court has held that complaints of female foeticide, registration permissions and cancellation of licence issues of diagnostic centres, etc. should be dealt with by a three-member panel and not by one officer, designated by the state government at district and sub-division levels. The high court full bench presided over by justice Krishna Murari said that legislature has bestowed immense powers on the designated officer to curb and put away the practice which is fundamentally based on certain erroneous notions, egocentric traditions and perverted perception of societal norms.

“...a multi-member body would serve the object and reasons more effectively for which the Act has been enacted. An individual member body may defer from the aim which the act sought to achieve,” the bench observed.

The full bench, which also had justices Mahesh Grover and Arun Palli as its members was answering a reference sent by a division bench, which had differed with the view of an earlier judgment by another division bench on designation of an authority under the law, Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994.

The law provides for a threemember panel at the state level, but does not specify how many members another authority for any part of state (district and sub divisional level), designated by a state, can have. While one division bench was of the view that it should have multiple members, another bench was of the view that had legislature desired multiple members, the law notified would have had it in clear words.

At the state level, the panel is headed by a joint director of health and family welfare as chairperson with an eminent woman and an officer of law department of the state as members. At the district level, it is headed by civil surgeons in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh.

The full bench observed that appointment of multi-member appropriate authority would advance the purpose of the law.

“…the legislative intention must be gatherable from the text, content and the context of the statute and in such circumstances the purposive approach would help and enhance the functional principle of the enactment,” the full bench observed, adding that the aim of the law was to unequivocally prohibit the misuse of pre-natal diagnostic techniques for determination of the sex of the foetus leading to female foeticide, as the same has led to a sharp decline in the female sex ratio in many of the states.