Despite respite in rules, adoption of kids among relatives low

Adopt children

Adopt children Picture for representational purpose , Thinkstock

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WRITTEN BY

Amrita Madhukalya

Updated: May 14, 2018, 07:50 AM IST

A year after the notification of the Adoption Rules, 2017, which allowed for relatives and step-parents to adopt children, the number of such adoptions across the nation remained abysmally low.

In the last year, Mizoram recorded the highest number of such adoptions with only 27 children, as per data released by the Central Adoption Resource Agency. There has not been a single such adoption in over 20 states and UTs, and in the remaining states, the number of adoption stood anywhere between 0 to 5.

In Maharashtra, there were only two such adoptions while states like Delhi, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh clocked only a single such adoption through the year.

CARA chief Col Deepak Kumar said that the central body has now instructed state agencies to mount an intensified campaign to make the scheme popular.

"We think that the scheme has not reached out to enough people and so the state agencies will carry out a campaign to disseminate the scheme," said Kumar.

The Adoption Rules, 2017, among a host of other changes, had brought in a change for Hindus looking to adopt children of relatives under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintainence Act (HAMA), 1956 and replaced the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.

Some of the changes it brought was to extend the eligibility age of a child for adoption in case of relatives from 15 years to 18 years, allowing relatives to adopt a child of a particular gender even if they had another child of the same gender, and making the adoption valid under a court order and not a deed, as it was under HAMA.

Despite the host of changes that were brought in the last year, the agency has been struggling with dwindling adoption numbers. While 3,988 children were adopted in 2014-15, the number fell to 3,011 in 2015-16 only to rise marginally to 3,210 in 2016-17.

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