Legally Free Certificates issued by CWC Srinagar are legally valid: HC

Srinagar: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh on Tuesday held that the Legally Free Certificates for adoption of babies issued by Child Welfare Committee (CWC) Srinagar dissolved on August 24 last year are legally valid.   

“… it is clarified that Legally Free Certificate of the babies issued by CWC, Srinagar dissolved on August 2022, are legally valid having been issued by the CWC, Srinagar, which is continuing pursuant to the interim directions passed by learned Single Judge dated 06.09.2022 in WP(C) no 1748/2022,” a division bench of Justice Sanjeev Kumar and justice Puneet Gupta said.    

However, the bench made it clear that apart from this direction it did not express its opinion on the merits of any other matter in connection with the adoption of the babies by the applicants.

Applicants, Dhyanesh Bhatt and Vaibhavi Kulkarni had approached the court seeking clarification with regard to validity of Legally Free Certificate issued by CWC for adoption of babies on January 24 this year.

The applicants contended that they registered themselves with the Child Adoption Resource Authority, which is a statutory body of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India.  They had given an option for adoption of a child of any gender from anywhere in India.

In their plea, the applicants claimed that the Child Adoption Resource Authority registered them in August 2019.

They said that all the formalities were completed and the CWC Srinagar granted even the Legally Free Certificate for adoption in their favour on January 24 this year. 

They submitted that the office of Phulwari (Cradle Baby reception Centre) SAA, Srinagar, who had already delivered the babies to them for foster care, later on withdrew the babies on the ground that the CWC, which had issued Legally Free Certificate of the babies was not validly constitute as having been dissolved on August 28, 2022.

“And therefore, all orders made by CWC after that date were not valid,” they said. 

The applicants approached the court seeking clarification as to whether the CWCs, which were dissolved on August 28, 2022, were competent to issue Legally Free Certificates of the babies on the strength of the interim order passed by the Single Judge. 

After hearing counsel for the applicants and going through the interim order dated September 6, 2022, passed by the Single Judge of the Court, the bench said: “We and are of the view that JJBs and CWCs which were dissolved on August 28, 2022, are in position in terms of the order of the status quo passed by the learned Single Judge and therefore, exercise all the powers conferred upon CWCs under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 and the rules framed there under.”

“In that view of the matter, the Legally Free Certificate issued in favour of the babies sought to be adopted by the applicants cannot be said to be invalid for that reason,” the court said.