International adoptions: UP witnesses ten-fold rise over four years

Girl child preferred: As many as 33 girls and 10 boys adopted by couples from outside India, last year. Parents in India adopt 94 girls and 49 boys.

Inter-country adoption of children from Uttar Pradesh is on the rise. Records of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), a pan-India agency, show that more and more foreigners and non-resident Indians (NRI) are opening their arms to children from the state. Also, in both international and in-country adoptions, there is a marked preference for the girl child.

According to CARA, 43 children from UP were adopted by parents located outside India, in 2018. This is ten times more than the number of inter-country adoptions witnessed by the state in 2014-15 -- four.

In another heartening development, the state, where the sex ratio is 913 females against 1,000 males, 49 boys and as many as 94 girls were adopted by domestic couples last year.

An official of the state women and child development department, Puneet Mishra, said, “Now, things are changing. Even in-country adoptions have a fair share of girl children.”

Activist Ruchi Tripathi shed more light on the trend. “There is no discrimination between girls and boys abroad, so naturally, the kids’ gender is not a consideration for couples from outside the country. But in the domestic scenario too, the situation is changing. Earlier, most prospective adoptive parents preferred the male child. However, with consistent counselling, they are also increasingly welcoming the girl child,” she said.

Prospective adoptive parents who can’t have children of their own or those who have lost their child/children due to a known cause (sickness/ accident) as well as single women over 40 years of age are usually provided priority in accordance to regulation 60 of the Adoption Regulations, 2017, said an official.

“Children can be adopted under the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act of 1956 and the Guardian and Wards Act of 1890,” he said.

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