Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity files for recognition of 79 child care homes

New Delhi, July 7: All child care homes run by the Mother Teresa-founded Missionaries of Charity (MoC), except those in Maharashtra and West Bengal, have filed for recognition of their institutions under the Juvenile Justice Act, officials said.

In 2015, an ideological row had erupted between the ministry and the charity over issues such as the latter'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.

But in October last year, former Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi had urged them to come back into the government's system of adoption services. Officials told PTI that at a meeting, the officials of the WCD ministry asked the MoC to either take authorisation of the child care institutions or shut down, following which the MoC applied for recognition of all 79 child care institutions across the country, barring West Bengal and Maharashtra, where there are around 12 institutions.

They said the approvals would be given by the respective state governments. The officials said that these MoC child care institutions have over 1,000 children above the age of six years and most of them are with special needs.

According to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, registration of CCIs and their linking with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) is mandatory. The Women and Child Development Ministry and the MoC have been involved in a number of rows in the past.

In July this year, Gandhi 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, Gandhi had ordered all the states to get the child-care homes run by the organisation inspected immediately.