Supreme Court agrees to hear PIL seeking simplification of child adoption process in India

NEW DELHI: A Supreme Court Bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Surya Kant on Monday issued notice to the Ministry of Women and Child Development on a PIL filed by a Navi Mumbai-based NGO – The Temple of Healing – through its secretary Piyush Saxena, the son of Justice K Narayan, for simplifying laws on adoption of orphans. It says the simplified procedure with a reduced paperwork will encourage childless couples to go for adoption of orphans.

The writ petition was filed in September last year with Saxena being the petitioner-in-person, pointing out that orphans in India, unlike many countries, are not covered separately by any specific ministry, but are included among all poor children and defined under the JJ Act of 2015 as a child without parents. It pleads the cause of the orphans, abandoned and surrendered children.

Saxena contended before the court that the legislature appreciates the difference between a poor child and an orphan, segregating them, But the executive has clubbed orphans and other children for the sake of administrative convenience.

The PIL says ten to 14% of the Indian population suffers from infertility, which is nearly 3.2 crore couples, who desperately want to adopt an orphan, but the Centre never had this data as it is a state subject and the state government did not have this data in the name of administrative convenience. The official figures put the number of orphans in India at 31 million.