Maneka for Mandatory Sex-determination Test

Reacting on Maneka’s proposal, activist Brinda Adige said, “I absolutely do not agree with Meneka’s statement for registering sex of the foetus, because sex determination does not matter”.

Launched on 22 January 2015 in Haryana’s Panipat district by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the central government’s flagship scheme aims at improving the trend of declining child sex ratio (CSR) in the country and promoting gender equality. “It should be registered to be able to check whether they have gone through with the births or not”, she said.

“Maneka Sanjay Gandhi said there is an alternate point of view that if each pregnancy could be registered and the sex of the foetus made known to parents and if it happens to be a female, the delivery should be tracked and recorded. Such a system would help in ensuring that a fetus is not aborted only because it is a female”.

The Women and Child Development Minister said, “As soon as the woman is pregnant, it becomes compulsory for her to tell if it is a boy or a girl and she has to register”. There is no formal proposal being considered by the Ministry on this issue at this stage. What Maneka said will fall squarely on expectant mothers and their babies. “Now, the government will add 61 more districts in this programme”, she said at the All India Regional Editors’ Conference in Jaipur.

‘States lax on counselling centres for women’ On the government’s Khoya Paya scheme, which involves putting up photographs of missing children and those of criminals involved in such cases on a dedicated website, the Union minister said it was yielding results.

“We can not keep catching people doing (illegal) ultrasound”, she said, adding that arrest of such people was not a permanent solution.