Kounteya Sinha | The Times of India | New Delhi |22 May 2010
Foreigners or NRIs coming to India to rent a womb will soon have to submit two documents — one confirming that their country of residence recognizes surrogacy as legal and secondly that it will give citizenship to the child born through agreement from an Indian mother.
According to the draft Assisted Reproductive Technology Regulation Bill, 2010, submitted to the Union health ministry on Friday, foreign and NRI couples will have to get “certificates from either the embassy of their country in India or from the external affairs ministry of their country, certifying that they permit surrogacy and that the child born through agreement in India will be given citizenship by them.”
Prepared by a 12-member committee headed by Dr P M Bhargava under the aegis of the ICMR, the draft bill also includes a provision which says that a foreign couple will have to identify a local guardian in India to take care of the surrogate mother during her gestation period as well as after the delivery, till the child is handed over to the commissioning parents.