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Created: 02 September 2019

NEW DELHI: National Commission for Women (NCW) organized a consultative meeting at Indian International Centre, New Delhi to review the law of ‘Guardianship Rights of Mother’. Chairperson, Jammu and Kashmir State Commission for Protection of Women and Child Rights (JKSCPWCR) Vasundhara Pathak Masoodi attended the meeting.

Deliberating on the subject during the meeting, the Chairperson said that Article 14 and 15 of Constitution of India ensures right to equality to all the citizens of India and prohibits discrimination on ground of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. She asserted, in view of specific provisions in the Constitution, upholding right to equality, any law that  declares only father as the natural guardian of the child needs a serious revisit and needs to be amended to provide the guardianship right to mother vis-a-vis father as natural guardian of the child.

Vasundhara Masoodi further said that a woman is primarily the natural guardian of a child and to deny her such right would be to challenge the law of nature as Almighty God himself has blessed woman with capacity to bear her child and by making her the first and primary source to feed child. The existing law that holds only father as a natural guardian of a child, except when child is below 5 years under HMGA 1956 should be amended to include "Mother" vis-a-vis father as natural guardian of child, she suggested.

Among others, the meeting was attended by Chairpersons of various State Women Commissions of the Country, Members of NCW, NCPCR, and CARA, legal experts, academicians and social activists working for the empowerment of women and protection of Child rights, besides officers of NCW.