We previously blogged about the unfortunate situation involving a German couple who had twins through a surrogate in India. Because Germany does not recognize surrogacy, German officials refused to allow the twins to enter the country or receive German citizenship. India, on the other hand, also refused to extend Indian citizenship to these twin babies leaving them effectively stateless.

However, the New Delhi Government has announced that it will petition the German government on humanitarian grounds to allow the twins to visit their parents in Germany:

“We must react to a human problem with compassion. We have to look at the merits of the case and I am sure the Ministry will do the right thing. We are after all human beings and we don’t want these children to be indefinitely in limbo. The Ministry will look at it with sympathy and we have to get the full details of the matter. Whatever the government does, it will be in the spirit of Indian people,” Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor told reporters on the sidelines of a CII seminar here.

German couple Jan Balaz and his wife Susan had twins– Nikolas and Leonard, through surrogacy in February last year. They were delivered by a ‘surrogate mother’– an Indian woman Martha Khristy in Anand in Gujarat.

The two year olds are currently staying in Jaipur with their father who can’t take them to Germany as the laws there don’t recognise surrogacy as a means of parenthood. The children can’t be given Indian citizenship also as the country’s laws also don’t allow the same. On Thursday, Solicitor General of India Gopal Subramanium had told the Supreme Court that on humanitarian grounds, the Government would try to persuade Germany to facilitate a one-time visa to the children born of a German couple through surrogacy in India, to allow them to leave the country.