Apex Court said Child adoption process in India tedious, must be streamlined

The Supreme Court on Friday said the kid adoption process in India is “very tedious” which there's an urgent need for the procedures to be “streamlined”.

A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and JB Pardiwala asked Additional lawman KM Nataraj, appearing for the Centre, to file its response to a PIL detailing steps to streamline the method of adoption of kids within the country.

“The reason we've issued notice on the PIL is that the method of kid adoption is incredibly tedious in India. The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has an annual capacity of two,000 adoptions which has now increased to 4,000. There are three crore children who are orphans during this country. there's an urgent need for the method to be streamlined,” the bench observed.

The court asked Nataraj to think about the suggestions of the PIL petitioner “The Temple of Healing” and file a response about the steps taken to streamline the method.

The ASG said he doesn't fathom the credibility of the NGO which a duplicate of the petition has not been served upon him.

The bench said it had been also earlier apprehensive about the intention of the NGO but when it came to understand about Piyush Saxena, appearing for the NGO and who has left his job in an exceedingly big corporate firm to pursue the cause, it had issued notice.

It asked Saxena to grant a duplicate of the petition to Nataraj, in order that he can file his response and posted the matter after three weeks.

On April 11, the highest court had agreed to listen to the plea seeking to simplify the legal process for child adoption in India, saying only 4,000 adoptions happen annually within the country.

It had issued notice to the Centre after Saxena, appearing for the NGO, said he had made several representations to the Union Ministry of ladies and Child Development for simplifying the method of kid adoption but nothing went on till now.

Saxena had submitted that as per the info available within the property right there are only 4,000 child adoptions annually but till last year there have been three crore orphaned children within the country. There are several infertile couples who are willing to own a toddler, he added.

“Last year, during the pandemic the ministry issued a notification that relaxed the norms but this might be done on a daily basis,” he said.

The top court had questioned Saxena to mention he represents an organisation and what does it need to do with the adoption process.