Priyanka Gupta, a resident of New Delhi and a single mother; and all this lady wanted is that her daughter’s passport would not have her father’s name – the identity of a man who had left her own daughter when she was just two months old. It of course, was shock for the kind of opinion India has regarding the position of women in the society. Judgmental questions were thrown at her: if she were a divorcee or if something is wrong with her family. Despite the hurdles, Priyanka took commendable efforts to put her point forward and struggled just to give up after two years. She couldn’t make the passport without, not putting the name of her daughter’s biological father as per rules. So, she finally got it done as her daughter aspired to go abroad for higher studies.
Later, she had an idea of signing a petition and make others sign it to, people who have similar opinions that the name of the father on an Indian passport is redundant. Priyanka’s petition, as reported by TOI on July 15, seeks for a change in passport rules that makes listing the father’s name mandatory .
The petition on change.org has already garnered over 46,800 signatures and the support of Union minister Maneka Gandhi. Maneka has urged her Cabinet colleague, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj, to amend passport rules. “Statistics reveal that number of single parents in the country is increasing both by way of conscious decision and by breakdown of marriages,” the WCD minister had tweeted on Friday in support of Priyanka’s petition.
In her petition, Priyanka has said, “We tried to convince the passport officer, wrote letters, met senior officers but our request was denied. In the end we were forced to include his name. Every time my daughter looks at her passport, she sees the name of a person who hurt her, who abandoned her.”
