District Magistrates told to expedite adoption orders

Letter from Central Adoption Resource Authority follows concerns over delays due to transfer of cases from courts to DMs

The country’s apex adoption body, Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), has written to District Magistrates to expeditiously dispose of cases and issue adoption orders, particularly where the matter has been transferred from courts in conformity with the revised rules.

“The amount of court backlog varies, in some instances, hearings have concluded, in others they have not. Although two months is the maximum allowed time for the DM to issue an adoption order, the DMs have the authority to conclude the case during the first hearing itself and to issue adoption orders as expeditiously as possible, particularly the transferred cases,” says a letter from Tripti Guha, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Women and Child Development and CEO of CARA, on September 27, 2022.

The letter follows the coming into effect of the Juvenile Justice (JJ) (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act 2021 from September 1, followed by the JJ Model Amendment Rules 2022 which make District Magistrates the authority for passing adoption orders, instead of courts that were assigned this role earlier. This had led to apprehensions about delays in nearly 1,000 cases pending before courts, which would now have to be transferred to DMs for a final order. Activists, lawyers and adoption agencies said DMs and courts were not aware about the new rules and didn’t have instructions to deal with cases where courts had already spent several weeks in hearing arguments and evidence.