The Hindu : National : `Lack of political will in tackling female foeticide'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 16, 2004

National

National

`Lack of political will in tackling female foeticide'

By Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI, APRIL 15. A three-day media workshop here on sex selection and female foeticide focussed on the lack of adequate and concerted political will in tackling the problem.

Statistics disclosed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare at the workshop showed that so far the highest number of cases filed in this context was by the West Bengal Government and that too for "non-registration of clinics'' that performed ultrasound or sonographic tests for detecting the sex of an unborn child.

The figures did not show a single case filed against the erring doctors and revealed only two cases as "decided'' in Punjab, which has a ratio of 793 females to 1000 males in the age group of zero to six.

Haryana, which has a ratio of 820 females to 1000 males in the age group of zero to six, had registered 11 cases for revealing the sex of the foetus. Maharashtra had also registered one case, while Delhi registered four cases.

In Punjab a total of 45 cases had been registered of which 25 were under "other violations of the Act/Rules,'' followed by 27 registered in Karnataka, mostly for non-registration of clinics. Only Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Punjab had registered cases for communicating the sex of the foetus. Haryana, Maharashtra and Delhi had also filed cases for advertisement about facilities for pre-conception/pre-natal sex selection.

According to the joint-secretary in the Department of Family Welfare, N.S. Kang, there were 22,378 registered agencies with facilities for determining the sex of an unborn child. Of these, the highest are in Maharashtra (3,905), followed by Tamil Nadu (2,236), Andhra Pradesh (2,025), Uttar Pradesh (2,005), Gujarat (1,980), Karnataka (1,619), Delhi (1,485) and Punjab (1,096).So far there have been 415 court/police cases, of which 160 cases were from West Bengal, followed by Delhi, Punjab, Karnataka and Haryana.

The workshop organised by the Centre for Advocacy and Research and the Centre for Women's Development Studies saw the participation of several stakeholders, including the Census Commissioner, J.K. Banthia, who said that the statistics should be considered as a `wake-up' call.

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