Two-week deadline to clear pending adoption cases

Two-week deadline to clear pending adoption cases

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

New Delhi, Sept. 6: Maneka Gandhi has asked states to ensure that cases of orphaned or abandoned children pending with child welfare committees are cleared for adoption within a fortnight.

Sources said there were as many as 10,000 prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) awaiting a call from the women and child development ministry but only 1,500 children with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) legally free for adoption.

"The problem is that while there are huge numbers of PAPs waiting to adopt, CARA has only 1,500 children in its pool for adoption. We have realised that many cases of orphaned and abandoned children are pending with child welfare committees (CWCs), which are delaying certifying them legally free for adoption," said a source in the women and child development ministry.

A child is declared legally free for adoption only after CWCs ensure there are no legal claimants for him or her, so there are no complications later.

Sources said Maneka had written to 29 chief ministers, urging them to ensure that state CWCs do not indefinitely sit on pending cases. She has also asked state ministers in charge of women and child development to ensure the process is completed in a "no-delay" mode within a fortnight.

A woman from Chennai, who has been waiting since March 2016 for a baby, has been stuck at the 80th position on the list for months.

"I am a mom of two kids from Chennai! We have been registered since March 2016, although our home study was only done and uploaded in June.... Our seniority is still in the early 80s with fluctuations, which I know is not uncommon!

"The waiting is HARD... and right now from 80 getting to 20 seems like a really distant dream. Just wanted to know how it's going for all of you out there waiting like us. This is way harder than both my pregnancies," she wrote on the website of a child adoption support group.

Sources in the women and child development ministry said there were 1,811 children waiting to be declared "legally free" for adoption.

The largest number of pending cases is in Maharashtra (439) followed by Madhya Pradesh (151), Tamil Nadu (132), Bengal (176), Uttar Pradesh (126) and Delhi (107).

Of these, nearly 1,000 cases have been pending in various CWCs for the last four months and some 500 for the past one year.

According to rules, an abandoned child received by a specialised adoption agency has to be produced before the CWC within 24 hours. After following due procedure, a CWC has to declare a child "legally free" within two months in case of a child up to two years of age and within four months for a child above two.

Over the past six years, the number of adoptions has fallen by 40 per cent from 6,321 in 2010 to 3,677 in 2016. This has raised concerns of adoptions taking place outside the legal system.

An official said: "We have to ensure that abandoned and orphaned children do not end up on the streets or are illegally adopted. We want them to be adopted by prospective adoptive parents who have been verified and who really want them.

"Once the system is in place, we will see that the number of children available for adoption goes up. However, as of now, our focus is to ensure that children already in the system get adopted and bureaucratic delays do not mar their chances. We do not want long institutionalised care for these children."

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