The Congress on Friday described the Surrogacy Bill that has been approved by the Union Cabinet as resembling “a draft from the stone ages” reflecting the views of “surrogate organisations” such as the RSS and VHP.

Opposing the provisions of the Bill, party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said they were out of sync with the aspirations of contemporary India, smacked of an “anti-liberal approach” apart from being “non-scientific.”

Value judgments had been injected into it in a “very paternalistic manner”, he said , pointing out that the Bill excluded surrogacy for live-in couples, those with adopted children, those with a single child, homosexuals, NRIs and foreigners.

“Why are they restricting surrogacy only to married couples? Surrogacy could be desired by widows, live-in partners and NRIs among others,” he said, adding that it was absurd that Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) and foreigners had been left out on the ground that divorces are very common in foreign countries.

Mr. Singhvi asked, “If all the categories are banned, then why have surrogacy at all.” Objecting to the 10 years punishment mandated for violators of the provisions of the new Bill, he said this showed that the government has “gone back to the stone ages.”

Mr. Singhvi claimed that the UPA had a far wider canvas in the 2010 Bill — the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill. In that Bill, only homosexuals had been excluded, but conceded that “Times have changed and that also requires a rethink.”