Punjab and Haryana High Court holds the ART Act age limit must be met on the day the service is taken

5 November 2026

The Punjab and Haryana High Court, which sits at Chandigarh, has read the age limit in the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 as something that must hold on the day the service is actually taken. Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya ruled that a woman past 50 cannot go through embryo transfer even if the embryos were made and frozen while she was still within the limit, because the procedure has two stages and the limit governs both. Section 21(g) of the Act permits ART for a woman below 50 and a man below 55. Each spouse is measured against their own ceiling, the Court said, rather than the couple being treated as a single unit. So a woman below 50 may take ART services in her own right even where her husband has passed 55. Veena Devi and another v. Union of India led the batch, and six connected petitions were disposed of with it.