LUCKNOW, July 15 -- The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has held that the age restriction under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 cannot be applied to couples who had created and frozen embryos before the law came into force.

A division bench of Justice Shekhar B Saraf and Justice Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary, in its July 7 judgment on a petition filed by a Lucknow couple, ruled that retrospective application of the age limit would interfere with their reproductive autonomy, which forms part of the right to personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution.

"The rigid application of age restriction under Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 infringes the fundamental right of the reproductive autonomy recognized as a part of pers...