Arun Muthuvel vs. Union of India
Background
The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 came into force on 25.01.2022 and, under Section 4(iii)(c)(I), imposes age restrictions on "intending couples" who may avail of gestational surrogacy. The petitioners in these tagged matters, including the applicant Arun Muthuvel, were intending couples who had already commenced their surrogacy procedures, such as creating and freezing embryos after extraction of gametes, before the Act came into force, but had not yet completed the process (i.e., embryo transfer to the surrogate mother) by the time the age-restriction provision would otherwise apply to them.
Decision Breakdown
The Court held that Section 4(iii)(c)(I)'s age restriction does not operate retrospectively against intending couples who had already commenced the surrogacy procedure before the Act's commencement and were at the embryo-creation/freezing stage or on the threshold of embryo transfer. Applying the general rule against retrospective operation of statutes and Article 21 (right to personal liberty/reproductive autonomy), the Court ruled that such couples are exempted from the age-qualification certification requirement, provided they satisfy the Act's other conditions, and directed that the competent authority issue certification accordingly. The Court clarified it was deciding only the applicability of the age bar to these specific petitioners, not the constitutional validity of the age restriction itself, and left other similarly-placed couples to approach their jurisdictional High Courts rather than the Supreme Court directly.
Lesson Learnt
A new law's restrictions generally do not apply retrospectively to strip away rights or processes that individuals had already lawfully begun before the law came into force: here, couples who had already started the surrogacy process before the 2021 Act's age-bar took effect could not be barred from completing it on that ground.