The government is thereby discussing on formulating a policy according to which the pregnant woman and her unborn child would be registered. As soon as the woman is pregnant, it becomes compulsory for her to tell if it is a boy or a girl and she has to register.
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Since the 1994 ban, requesting or conducting a test to find out a baby’s gender has been punishable by up to five years in prison.
A 2011 study in the British medical journal The Lancet found that up to 12 million girls had been aborted in the last three decades in India.
“It is a different way to look at the problem of female foeticide, which could be solved with this idea”, she said.
Child sex ratio in Haryana is 889 girls per 1,000 boys.
But women’s rights groups said a change of policy would be a mistake and result in women from rural areas coming under even more pressure from their families to have an abortion.
The ban has only led to medical practitioners who carry out the tests being punished, said Ms Gandhi. “It is further clarified that there is no formal proposal being considered by the Ministry on this issue at this stage”, the statement said.
“What is required is a continued and stringent implementation of the present act, which has clearly acted as a deterrent wherever it has been used effectively”.
PM Modi had denounced the practice of female foeticide, saying such discrimination reflects “mental illness” and displays a mindset “worse than people in the 18th century”.
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The Congress Party on Tuesday said Women and Child Development (WCD) Minister Maneka Gandhi’s suggestion of sex determination tests to be made compulsory to check the rising cases of female foeticide could prove to be counter-productive.
