As per information provided by States/UTs, 645 number of children have lost their parents to Covid since April 2021 to 28.05.2021.

The children in distress situations merit care and protection under the provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015(JJ Act). The Act has laid procedure for rehabilitation of such children through institutional and non-institutional care including adoption. The Adoption of children under the JJ Act, 2015 is undertaken through the Child Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System (CARINGS), a web-based application and the prospective adoptive parents are referred children on the basis of their seniority, which is determined as per their date of registration. In the wake of the Covid pandemic, the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has taken several measures to facilitate adoption process such as provisional registration of Prospective Adoptive Parents (PAPs) and requesting all Registrar Generals to take up adoption cases on priority & to facilitate Virtual Court hearings to expedite adoption cases.

Hon’ble PM has announced PM CARES for children scheme to support children who have lost both parents or surviving parent or legal guardian or adoptive parents due to COVID-19 pandemic. The scheme provides support for education and health and will create a corpus of Rs 10 lakh for each child when he or she reaches 18 years of age. This corpus will be used to give a monthly financial support/ stipend form 18 years of age, for the next 5 years to take care of his or her personal requirements during the period of higher education and on reaching the age of 23 years, he or she will get the corpus amount as one lump-sum for personal and professional use. The scheme is accessible through an online portal i.e. pmcaresforchildren.in. The portal has been introduced to all the States and UTs on 15.07.21. Any Citizen can inform the administration regarding a child eligible for support under this scheme through the portal.

Further, the Ministry has asked States and UTs to take immediate action for care and protection of children adversely impacted by COVID 19, in accordance with the provisions of the JJ Act and Rules thereunder, while leveraging the facilities funded under the Child Protection Services scheme.

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment bill, 2021, for simplification of the adoption process, by empowering District Magistrate including Additional District Magistrate, for completing adoption process, under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 has been passed by both houses of Parliament.

This information was given by the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.

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AS