India Backs Queer Partner Medical Decisions in Hospital Consent Case

In a mid-September affidavit, India's Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the National Medical Commission told the Delhi High Court that queer partner medical decisions are valid when a competent adult nominates their partner in advance. The filing, placed before Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma's bench in a writ petition filed by Arshiya Takkar, found no medical or ethical reason to keep a queer or non-heterosexual partner from making healthcare choices for a patient who can no longer decide for themselves. It is one of the clearest official statements India has made on queer partner medical decisions inside hospitals, according to a LiveLaw report on the affidavit.

The petition asks the court to direct hospitals, physicians and registered medical practitioners to recognise a non-heterosexual partner as a patient's medical representative, to let that partner give consent for treatment, and to allow access to the patient during medical care. As an alternative, the petitioner asked for a declaration that an advance medical power of attorney executed in favour of a non-heterosexual partner would be enough to authorise the partner in treatment or emergencies. The plea is, at bottom, a fight over who controls queer partner medical decisions when the patient cannot speak. The problem, as the plea framed it, sits in Clause 7.16 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations of 2002, which requires consent from a "husband or wife, parent or guardian in the case of minor, or the patient himself" and says nothing explicit about unmarried partners, Medical Dialogues reported in its coverage of the case.

The affidavit's key sentence on queer partner medical decisions pulls no punches. "Where a competent adult has nominated or otherwise authorised his or her partner to act on his or her behalf in the event of incapacity," the filing said, according to an IANS report, "there is no medical or ethical rationale for excluding such 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." Read that way, the centre is saying queer partner medical decisions rest on patient autonomy, not on who the state considers a spouse. The filing added that such an interpretation, while preserving patient safety and due process, "would advance the constitutional values of autonomy, dignity, equality and non-discrimination," Medical Dialogues reported.

What the centre actually told the court

The health ministry did not present this as new law. It argued the tools already exist. According to a Law Trend report on the submission, the ministry pointed to judicial rulings and statutory provisions, including the Mental Healthcare Act of 2017, as establishing that a nominated medical representative does not have to be a spouse or a biological relative. Any designated individual chosen by a patient can take on that responsibility, the ministry said, putting queer partner medical decisions on the same footing as any other nominated representative's. In the same vein, the centre told the court that the absence of a relative should not by itself block urgent medical treatment, and that a hospital's habit of demanding a relative's consent cannot ordinarily override a competent adult patient's right to bodily autonomy, Bar and Bench reported in its account of the affidavit.

The centre's overall answer is that the relief Takkar seeks is "substantially capable of being accommodated" within the existing legal and ethical framework. Clause 7.16, it said, can be read "harmoniously and purposively" alongside the rest of the framework so that it does not shut out a partner duly nominated or authorised by a competent adult patient, LiveLaw reported. The filing, signed by National Medical Commission director Abhijit Chakraborty as the authorised representative of the Union of India, was placed on record after the High Court's August 20 order directing the respondents to state their position. None of this is a court ruling on queer partner medical decisions yet, but a government telling a court it largely agrees tends to shape where the ruling lands.

The fine print the ministry kept

None of this touches marriage. The centre was explicit that under India's existing matrimonial framework, the word "spouse" still means a husband or wife arising from a legally recognised marriage. It cited the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriage Act as gender-specific statutes, and leaned on the Supreme Court's Constitution Bench judgment in Supriyo v Union of India, the 2023 split verdict that declined to read same-sex marriage into existing law while recognising that queer people hold a right to union and cohabitation under Article 21. Persons in a same-sex relationship do not acquire the statutory status of spouse merely by being in one, the affidavit said, according to the IANS report. In other words, queer partner medical decisions can be authorised by nomination, but nomination is not marriage, and the affidavit insists the two questions stay separate. The ministry drew the line plainly: backing queer partner medical decisions is not the same as recognising same-sex marriage.

The centre also stressed that its position "recognises and respects the constitutional guarantees of dignity, privacy, autonomy, equality and individual choice available to all persons, including members of the LGBTQIA+ community," and that nothing in the filing was meant to question the constitutional protection available to people in queer relationships, LiveLaw reported. The affidavit closed the circle with a practical caveat: when an adult patient cannot make or communicate a decision, factors such as the nature of the treatment, the urgency of the situation, the patient's own wishes and the applicable legal framework all remain relevant to deciding who is competent to act. Nomination strengthens a partner's standing, though the affidavit itself says the specifics of each case still matter.

The stakes behind that caveat are not theoretical. Gen Z NewZ previously covered Turkiye's "My Family Is Safe" raids, a reminder that queer partner medical decisions are only one front in a wider fight over queer people's legal standing, which can swing hard with political weather. And as this site reported after the Mexico City abortion march, street-level wins and courtroom filings do not automatically become lived rights; the gap between a ministry's affidavit and a hospital reception desk at two in the morning is where these promises get tested.

What couples can do while the court decides

The most useful line in the whole filing might be its most boring one: the partner must be "nominated or otherwise authorised." The centre's logic only protects queer partner medical decisions that exist on paper before the emergency does. An advance medical power of attorney naming a partner, a written nomination lodged with the hospital's records, a note in an insurance file: none of these are romantic, and all of them are the difference between a partner being heard and a partner being told to wait outside. The petition itself asks the court to bless exactly that paperwork as sufficient authority.

For now, the case continues, and hospitals can still hide behind the old consent rules while they do. But the government's own words are now on the record on queer partner medical decisions: excluding a nominated queer partner has, in the ministry's own phrasing, no medical or ethical rationale. That sentence will be quoted back at every hospital administrator who reaches for one anyway.