The Supreme Court ruled that couples who began the surrogacy process before the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021, came into force would not be bound by its age restrictions.
Under the law, the woman must be between 23 and 50 years of age, and the man between 26 and 55 years to qualify as intending parents for surrogacy. However, a Bench comprising Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice K.V. Viswanathan clarified that these age restrictions cannot be applied retrospectively to couples who had already initiated the surrogacy process before the law came into effect.
The Court allowed three such couples, who had frozen embryos earlier, to proceed with surrogacy and sought clarification from the government on the logic behind the age limits prescribed under the Act.