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New Delhi: The Centre should enact a legislation to take care of surrogacy and related issues, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday as the last hurdle was cleared in the travel of surrogate twins to Germany with their natural father Jan Balaz.
Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium told the vacation Bench of Justices G S Singhvi and C K Prasad that the German government had granted visas to the twins born to a surrogate Indian mother, and that the Centre has completed all the formalities for ensuring that the couple could return to their country with the babies.
"We can only wish them good luck," the Bench observed while complimenting the Solicitor General for facilitating the visas to the twins.
The Supreme Court, however, hoped that Parliament would make appropriate legislation to clarify the country's legal position vis-a-vis the citizenship rights of a surrogate child born to an Indian woman but commissioned by foreign parents.
To this, the Solicitor General submitted that he had already written to the Union government to make appropriate legislation to avoid tricky situations like the present one.
The German couple -- John Balaz and his wife -- had sought Indian citizenship for the children born in February 2008 through surrogate mother Martha Immanual Khristy on the plea that the twins otherwise would not be allowed to enter Germany which does not recognise surrogacy.
Earlier, the apex court had directed the Central Adoption Resource Agency to consider as a one-time measure the plea of the couple for adoption of the twins on humanitarian grounds.
The Supreme Court had passed the direction after the couple told the Bench that they were willing to go for an inter-country adoption as surrogacy is a punishable offence in their country.
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