The Centre is soon going to make it mandatory to clear adoption requests within two months, a change that will bring succour to prospective parents who have to wait for years looking to adopt.
The changes will be brought about in the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Model Rules, which will soon be notified, DH has learnt. The Rules, which were due for an amendment after the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act was amended in 2021, will be notified soon.
Primary among the changes that the 2021 amendment brought to the JJ Act, is the additional powers that district magistrates and additional district magistrates were given in terms of adoption and child care matters. As per the amendment, adoption orders are to be issued by DMs and not courts.
Senior officials of the women and child development ministry that DH spoke to said that among the Rules will be a provision to bring down the time frame of an adoption from 18 months to 2 months. While the stipulated time is 18 months, parents wait up to four years to adopt a child.
One of the key reasons is the wait for the referral of a child. The time frame under the existing mechanism comes down if the parents agree to adopt a special needs child.
“With the Rules, the idea is to upgrade the process. Taking the adoption process out of the courts will help us save the additional time,” a senior ministry official told DH.
Government data states that between 2015 to 2021, as many as 22,000 children were added to adoption lists through 486 adoption agencies. During the same period, 19,364 adoptions took place within India, and 3,359 children were adopted outside India.
The demand far outweighs the supply, while there were around 28,000 prospective parents registered to adopt in 2021 alone, only 2,200 children are legally free for adoption.
Apart from expediting the process of adoption, the government will also pay more attention to foster care with the upcoming Rules.