Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
It is the mature minor case. Indian statute law fixes an age below which a child's consent counts for nothing, but says little about the adolescent who is plainly capable of understanding what is proposed. Gillick supplies the principle for that gap: capacity is a question of understanding, not of birthdays, and the parental right to decide is not permanent.
Facts
The question was whether contraceptive advice and treatment could be given to minors without parental consent.
Held
By a majority of three to two, the House held that the parents' right to decide for a child ceases when the child attains sufficient understanding and intelligence to understand fully what is proposed. Even before that point, the parental right gives way in an emergency, in cases of parental neglect or abandonment, or where the parents cannot be traced.
Reasoning
The parental right exists for the child's protection, so it lasts only as long as the protection is needed. Once the child can genuinely understand the nature and consequences of what is proposed, the reason for the right has gone, and with it the right. The further exceptions follow the same logic from the opposite direction: where the parent is absent, neglectful or unreachable, insisting on parental consent would expose the child to the very harm the right exists to prevent.
The test is therefore about this child and this proposal — a child may have sufficient understanding for one decision and not for another.
Exam use
Cite it as the addition to Samira Kohli on who may consent. The full sequence for a minor: the statutory rules first — an act done in good faith for the benefit of a person under twelve with the guardian's consent (BNS s. 27), and the invalidity of a consent given by a child under twelve (s. 28(c)) — then Gillick for the adolescent above that age, where the question becomes her actual understanding.
In the standing problem — a sixteen-year-old seeking treatment and asking that her parents not be told — the answer has four parts: Gillick, so the parental right yields to a child of sufficient understanding; the BNS provisions, which speak only to children under twelve; confidentiality, which is owed to her, so disclosure to the parents without her consent needs an exception; but if the facts disclose a sexual offence against a child, the special child-protection law requires the doctor to report it. Close on the tension between confidentiality and mandatory reporting.
What it does not decide: it is an English decision and no Indian statute enacts it; it does not fix an age; and it does not override the specific statutory consents that Indian law prescribes for termination of pregnancy, transplantation and pre-natal diagnostic procedures, which must be complied with on their own terms.