All children homes to be registered under Juvenile Justice Act: WCD ministry

All children homes in India will have to be registered under the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act even if they have a license under any other Indian law, the government has said.

Updated on: Oct 1, 2012, 22:09:50 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

All children homes in India will have to be registered under the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act even if they have a license under any other Indian law, the government has said. The Women and Child Development ministry had said the JJ Act will apply even to those child care institutions which do not keen children in need of care and protection.

"It is a legal requirement that all institutions housing children in need of care and protection need to be registered under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act," the ministry said, in an affidavit filed in the Delhi high court.

The court is hearing a petition filed by civil society group HAQ Centre for Child Rights seeking registration of a sister concern of Arya Orphanage under JJ Act. The orphanage had said that as the institution had a license under the Women and Children's Institutions (Licensing) Act, 1956 it did not required registration under JJ Act.

Overruling the contention and laying a clear policy framework for entire country, the ministry said that registration of institutions under Women and Children Institutions (Licensing) Act had no value as the said act stood repealed since the JJ Act came into being in 2006.

Many state government including Delhi and Madhya Pradesh have been issuing licenses to children institutions under the Women and Children Institutions (Licensing) Act.

"There is an urgent need to identify and register all Child Care Institutions in the state and to establish mechanism for monitoring the management of the homes through inspection committees and management committees as prescribed under the JJ Act and Rules," WCD minister Krishna Tirath said in a letter to all chief ministers.

The affidavit also said that the present JJ Act is the primary law in the country for care, protection, treatment, development and rehabilitation of children in difficult circumstances, including children in conflict with law and those in need of care and protection.

The law defines a child in need of care and protection as the one who is found without any home or settled place or abode and without any ostensible means of subsistence. It means that services such as foster care, adoption and sponsorship provided to mainstream children into the society are covered under this definition.

The WCD ministry has also notified model rules to administer all child care institutions and urged the state governments to adopt these rules.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.