Govt asks states to inspect child care homes run by Missionaries of Charity

NEW DELHI: Taking cognisance of recent cases of alleged illegal adoption reported from an institution run by the Missionaries of Charity in Jharkhand, Women and Child Development (WCD) minister Maneka Gandhi has instructed states to inspect all child care homes run by the organisation across the country.

Maneka also directed state governments to ensure that child care institutions are registered and linked to the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) in one month. The Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act, 2015, provides for mandatory registration of child care institutions.

The Supreme Court in December 2017 had dismissed petitions of some orphanages challenging the mandatory registration clause in the JJ Act. Despite the SC order, only 2,300 child care institutions have been linked to CARA and 4,000 are yet to do so.

Maneka expressed displeasure that the 2,300 institutions which were linked to CARA had failed to bring children available with them into the adoption system. According to National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, there are 232,937 children in all the child care homes — registered and unregistered — in the country.