JP Nadda denies any Cabinet proposal over prenatal test

A day after women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi suggested that sex determination test be made compulsory to curb female foeticide, Union health minister J.P. Nadda has denied there was any proposal before the Cabinet to make the check-up legal.

Mr Nadda said that Ms Gandhi’s statements were her personal views, but no such proposal was discussed in the Cabinet.

Speaking at All-India Regional Editors conference on Monday, Ms Gandhi had said, “In my personal view, the woman should be compulsorily told whether it is a boy or girl child whom she is going to give birth to. I am just putting out this idea. It is being discussed though there is no conclusion yet.”

Mr Nadda, who was in Jaipur to attend the same event, informed that the Central government was providing money for free medicine scheme to states though some of them have been spending money from their own budget, which is up to them.

He said that the Central government was also providing cancer treatment medicines at discount of 80 per cent and if a state government provides space in its big hospitals, the Centre may open fair price medical stores in them.

WCD clears air after row The women and child development ministry put out a statement Tuesday asserting that while such an idea had been mooted, there was no Cabinet proposal in this regard.

“Minister WCD clarifies there is no Cabinet proposal for tracking the sex of a foetus and compulsory determination of foetal sex is an idea given by some stakeholders,” the WCD ministry said on Twitter.

The ministry’s statement added: “She (Ms Gandhi) had specifically stated that this needs further debate and had requested the media to give their suggestions.”

The idea behind mandatory registration of the gender of an unborn child is to enable proper monitoring, it said.

“It is an alternative point of view that if each pregnancy could be registered and the sex of the foetus could be made known to parents, and if the same happens to be a female, the delivery should be tracked and recorded. Such a system would help ensure that a foetus is not aborted only because it is a female,” the WCD ministry’s statement added.