ADOPTION 

Context

Key points 

• All cases pending before the courts have to be now transferred. Hundreds of adoptive parents in the country are now concerned that the transfer process will further delay what is already a long and tedious process.
• There are questions about whether an order passed by the executive will pass muster when an adopted child's entitlements on succession and inheritance are contested before a court.

Amendments 

• The Parliament passed the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children), Amendment Bill, 2021 in July last year to amend the Juvenile Justice Act (JJ Act), 2015.
• The key changes include authorising District Magistrates and Additional District Magistrates to issue adoption orders under Section 61 of the JJ Act by striking out the word "court".
• This was done "to ensure speedy disposal of cases and enhance accountability".
• The District Magistrates have also been empowered under the Act to inspect child care institutions as well as evaluate the functioning of district child protection units, child care institutions etc.
• The Act and the corresponding rules came into effect on September 1.

Concerns 

• The revised rules have parents, activists, lawyers and adoption agencies worried as cases already before courts for the past several months will have to be transferred and the process will have to start afresh.
• A petition for adoption orders is filed after a parent registers for adoption to refer a child and is subsequently allowed to take a child in pre-adoption foster care pending an adoption order.
• Dealy in such an order can often mean that a child can't get admission into a school because parents don't yet have a birth certificate.
• In one case, parents were unable to claim health insurance if a child is admitted to a hospital.

Central Adoption Resource Authority 

• The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) says there are nearly 1, 000 adoption cases pending before various courts in the country.
• Parents and lawyers also state that neither judges nor DMs are aware of the change in the JJ Act leading to confusion in the system and delays.
• According to CARA, the Ministry of Women and Child Development is drafting a letter to be sent to State governments clarifying that where adoption orders have already been given or will be given shortly, the DMs should consider them valid. But there are also larger concerns.

Adoption procedure 

• Adoptions in India are governed by two laws the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 (HAMA) and the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015.
• Both laws have separate eligibility criteria for adoptive parents.
• Those applying under the JJ Act have to register on CARA's portal after which a specialised adoption agency.
• The candidate eligible for adoption is referred to the applicant to be declared legally free for adoption.
• Under HAMA, a "dattaka home" ceremony, adoption deed or court order is sufficient to obtain irrevocable adoption rights.
• But there are no rules for monitoring adoptions and verifying the sourcing of children and determining whether parents are fit to adopt.

Challenges 

• There are many problems with the adoption system under CARA but at the heart of it is the fact that there are very few children in its registry.
• There are only 2, 188 children in the adoption pool, while there are more than 31, 000 parents waiting to adopt a child which forces many to wait for up to three years to be able to give a family to a child.
• This allows traffickers to take advantage of loopholes in HAMA.
• These concerns were also highlighted by a Parliamentary panel in August in its report on the "Review of Guardianship and Adoption Law".
• It recommended a district-level survey of orphaned and abandoned children.
• It is needed is a child-centric, optional, enabling and gender-just special adoption law like in other countries.

• As far as the JJ Act is concerned, the law handless issue of children in conflict with the law as well as those who need care and protection and only has a small chapter on adoptions.

In a centralised adoption system 

• In 2015, the then Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandi centralised the entire adoption system by empowering CARA to maintain various specialised adoption agencies, a registry of children, and prospective adoptive parents as well as match them before adoption.
• This was aimed at checking rampant corruption and trafficking as childcare institutions and NGOs could directly give children for adoption after obtaining a no-objection certificate from CARA.
• But the new system has failed in ensuring that more children in need of families are brought into its safety net.

Conclusion 

• There was a need to check malpractices and improve monitoring. But in the new system, the soul in adoption is gone.
• Human contact, bonding and psychological preparedness have been taken away.
• Therefore, parents may look at other ways to adopt a child.
• Another dangerous repercussion of this is that in the past few years, there has been an increasing number of disruptions and dissolutions, where children are returned after the adoption is formalised.

Prelims & Mains Perspective