Meet today on children’s homes

A plan to make life of children in Delhi government homes a little better would be discussed at a meeting on Friday, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 31, 2008, 01:07:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A plan to make life of children in Delhi government homes a little better would be discussed at a meeting on Friday.

The Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights has invited all stakeholders to suggest ways to improve condition of children in government homes after Hindustan Times highlighted the plight of about 110 children living in such a home in Narela.

Amod Kanth, chairman of the commission, said, “We would be talking to all stakeholders on Friday on what can be done to provide better living condition to children.”

At the meeting, the commission is also expected to review the implementation of a government committee constituted in 1996 to improve living condition for children in Delhi homes.

“Although the committee constituted by then Lieutenant-Governor Tejinder Khanna had made several recommendations, only a few of them have been implemented,” said Raj Mangal of NGO Pratidhi.

Condition in Narela home has deteriorated in recent years because of a long-standing dispute between the Delhi government and the Khadi Gram Udhyog, who owns the building. An inquiry conducted by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) said the children have suffered because of this.

The NCPCR said the children in Narela home were not getting regular meals, slept on rotten bed sheets and mattresses and got unclean drinking water. It also said the rooms have seepage, were not cleaned for days and the toilets were dingy.

“It is totally unacceptable that such institutions inflict violence on children depriving them of basic human rights,” was the comment made by NCPCR chairperson Shantha Sinha after the inquiry.

A senior government official had said the children would be shifted from the Narela home by December, but NGOs were critical of that the fact that they would have to spend another two months there.

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

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