Government Tells Delhi HC: Same-Sex Partner Can Be Nominated for Medical Decisions

The news

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the National Medical Commission have told the Delhi High Court that a competent adult can nominate a partner — including one in a non-heterosexual relationship — to take medical decisions on his or her behalf in the event of incapacity, in a plea filed by Arshiya Takkar, who has been in a relationship with her partner since 2015 and married her in New Zealand in 2023. The government's affidavit states that a nomination could be subject to applicable law and appropriate safeguards, and that such an extension of the same principle would be 'a logical and tailored extension' consistent with the existing legal and medical framework. It further submitted that where a competent adult has nominated or otherwise authorised their partner to act on their behalf in the event of incapacity, 'there appears to be no medical or ethical rationale' for excluding such a person merely on account of the sex, gender or sexual orientation of the partners, or because their union does not fall within the conventional understanding of marriage. The petition is likely to come up for hearing on Thursday.

Static syllabus linkage

1. The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, which statutorily allows a patient to nominate 'any person' as their representative for treatment decisions; the Supreme Court's 2023 five-judge Supriyo vs Union of India verdict, which declined to grant same-sex couples a fundamental right to marry while flagging incremental protections for the government and legislature to consider; Article 21's protection of personal autonomy and dignity.

Why UPSC loves this

1. This is a direct, live continuation of a story already covered in this digest series — LGBTQ+ rights extended incrementally, short of formal marriage equality, remains one of the most consistently tested GS2/Society themes; this update is valuable because it moves the story from a general policy stance to a specific, formal government submission in an individual litigant's case, which strengthens its citability as a concrete example.

Analysis

1. The specific legal language used by the government here — 'no medical or ethical rationale' for exclusion based on sex, gender or sexual orientation — is analytically significant because it goes further than a narrow, case-specific concession; it articulates a general principle that could apply well beyond this individual petitioner if consistently followed in future cases. This matters for understanding the incremental-rights strategy flagged in earlier coverage: by making the argument in principled, general terms within a specific case rather than through standalone legislation, the government advances the substantive protection while avoiding the more politically fraught legislative process a marriage-equality-adjacent law would require, and without conceding the larger marriage-equality question the 2023 Supriyo verdict deliberately left to Parliament. The specific facts of this case — a couple together since 2015, married abroad in 2023 — also illustrate a structural limitation of the incremental approach worth flagging: this protection required active litigation by a specific, resourced petitioner to establish, rather than being available as a matter of routine administrative process to any same-sex couple who might need it in an actual medical emergency, when there is no time for litigation. A strong answer should note that a favourable court ruling in this specific case would still leave the underlying implementation gap (case-by-case litigation dependency, discussed in earlier coverage) largely unaddressed unless it results in a general administrative circular or rule change applicable prospectively to all similarly situated couples, not just this petitioner.

Administrator's brainstorm