Maneka asks Missionaries of Charity to return into govt adoption system

Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi Monday asked child-care homes run by the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) to "come back into" the government's system of adoption services.

In 2015, an ideological row erupted between the ministry and the Mother Teresa-founded organisation over issues such as the MoC's denial to give children to separated or divorced parents.

Following this, the Missionaries of Charity decided to stop putting children up for adoption under the government's Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) system.

Maneka Monday met a MoC delegation led by Sister Mary Prema Pierick, who heads the organisation after Mother Teresa, and requested them "to come back into" the CARA system of adoption.

The CARA functions as the nodal body for adoption of children and is mandated to monitor and regulate in-country and inter-country adoptions.

The Union minister said the move aims to bring children living in the 79 MoC homes into family care.

"Prema agreed to my request to work jointly on each of these homes so that the children in the MoC homes can be on-boarded into CARINGS expeditiously," she tweeted.

The Women and Child Development Ministry and the MoC have been involved in a number of rows in the past.

In July this year, Maneka had ordered all states to get the child-care homes run by the MoC inspected, after cases of alleged illegal adoptions carried out by the homes came to light.

A shelter home run by the MoC in Ranchi has allegedly been involved in "selling" three children and "giving away" another one.

Taking cognisance of the cases of alleged illegal adoptions carried out by the MoC in Jharkhand, Maneka ordered all the states to get the child-care homes run by the organisation inspected immediately, the ministry had said in a statement in July.

There was also a conflict in 2015 over the MoCs not allowing adoption by separated or divorced or single parents.

Maneka had then said the government would have to derecognise the organisation if it continued to defy the revised guidelines but the Missionaries of Charity itself decided to stop putting children up for adoption.