Karnataka High Court allows mother’s plea to change minor daughter’s surname to reflect maternal lineage in birth certificate

Recognising the significance of maternal lineage in determining a child’s surname in the best interests of a child born out of a live-in relationship, the Karnataka High Court has directed the Registrar of Births and Deaths, Bengaluru to change the name of an eight-year-old girl to reflect her Nepali mother’s family name instead of her father’s, while retaining the biological father’s name in the birth certificate.

“Where the mother is the sole caregiver and natural guardian, in fact, there is no Constitutional impediment in recognising maternal lineage as the marker of the child’s surname. Recognition of maternal identity does not diminish paternal status; it affirms parity,” the court observed.

Only social convention

The presumption that a child must invariably bear the surname of the father is not a Constitutional mandate but a social convention, the court said, while pointing out that such a convention cannot override the Constitutional principle that men and women enjoy equal status in matters relating to family, parenthood, and identity.

Justice Suraj Govindraj passed the order while allowing the petition filed by the minor daughter and her 30-year-old mother, whose plea for changing daughter’s surname in the birth certificate was rejected by the authorities without assigning any reason.

The child was born in February 2017 at K.C. General Hospital in Bengaluru out of a live-in relationship of the petitioner-woman with a man, also a native of Nepal. However, the father of the child subsequently expressed unwillingness to continue the relationship and left for his home town in Nepal, completely abandoning both the mother and the child, it was stated in the petition.

Since then, there has been no interaction, communication, or contribution from the father towards the child’s upbringing, mother has been the sole caregiver, raising the child with the support of her maternal family, it was pointed out in the petition.

Rejecting the claim of the authorities that they have no power to make such a change in the name, the court said that the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, empowers the Registrar to correct entries that are “erroneous in form or substance”, a phrase broad enough to encompass not merely clerical errors but also errors going to the substance of the entry.

Father’s name stays

Significantly, the court noted that the change sought does not involve the deletion of the father’s name from the birth certificate. The column relating to the father would continue to reflect the biological father’s name, ensuring that the factual and legal acknowledgment of paternity remains intact. The only change is to the child’s surname, incorporating the maternal derivative and family name, the court said.

Applying the principle of the “best interest of the child”, enshrined in Article 3 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 21 of the Constitution of India, the court held that “the change in surname will promote the child’s identity, dignity, well-being, and practical convenience, and is in best interest of the child”.

Meanwhile, the court clarified that changing the surname of the child would not extinguish any rights that the child may have from the biological father under any law for the time being in force, including rights of inheritance, succession, and maintenance.