Grandparents demand right to access to grandchildren

Bengaluru, March 8: Two women's rights activists on Sunday demanded from the government an inheritance and succession-like law that would ensure grandparents' rights to be with their grand-children in cases of marital discord and breakdown. The activists, who are grandparents themselves, started on Saturday a signature-cum-awareness campaign, the first such initiative in the country, to demand a law to protect the rights of grandparents. "We are receiving a number of complaints from the elderly people that there is no law that protects their rights as grandparents in case of matrimonial discord of their children," Bangalore-based activist Sudha Rajashekar, coordinator of the campaign, told IANS. Rajashekar heads the grandparents' wing of the Child Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting (CRISP) based here. Another activist, Shobha Reddy (name changed), said she was not allowed to meet her grandchildren by her estranged daughter-in-law. Seeking a law to safeguard the rights of elderly like her, she said: "She (daughter-in-law) wants her children to have a right over my property, but she is not allowing my grandchildren to stay with me even on weekends. We want some legal protection."