Supreme Court on adoption: 'Young couples waiting, lakhs of orphans are there'

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday said that it is important to streamline the child adoption process in the country, as there are many young couples waiting to adopt, while there are lakhs of orphans, but the process is very tedious.

A bench, headed by Justices DY Chandrachud and comprising Justices AS Bopanna and JB Pardiwala, said that the adoption process needs to be streamlined as there is a three to four years waiting period under the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) to adopt a single child.

The bench told Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj, appearing for the Centre: "There are a lot of young couples waiting to adopt the child but the process is so... Can you imagine a three to four years period to adopt a child in India? It should be made simpler."

Nataraj submitted that the government is seized of the issue and requested the court to grant six weeks to file response on a plea filed by Piyush Saxena, secretary of the NGO 'The Temple of Healing'. The NGO had moved the top court seeking to simplify the process of child adoption in the country.

The bench asked Nataraj to explore the possibility of a meeting between Saxena and someone responsible from the Ministry of Child Development and also examine suggestions made by him on making adoption simpler and prepare a report, which should be filed in the top court. After hearing arguments, the top court scheduled the matter for further hearing in October.

In the previous hearing, too, the top court had noted that the child adoption process in India is very tedious and emphasized on streamlining the procedure.

On April 11, the Supreme Court issued notice on the plea seeking a direction to the Centre for improving the number of adoptions in the country and also a direction to the Ministry of Women and Child Development to make adoption procedures simple, and digitizing the registration of orphans.

The plea said adoptions are low in India due to multiple reasons. Saxena argued that 4,000 children are adopted in the country every year, but there are over 3 crore orphans in the country. (IANS)

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