Juvenile Justice Act simplifies adoption process: Smriti Irani

NT Correspondent

Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani on Monday said that child welfare committees are trained in accordance with the new amendments to Juvenile Justice Act.

In an interaction with media persons after attending the zonal conferences with states, Irani said that the Juvenile Justice Act simplifies adoption processes. “The District Magistrate now becomes the fulcrum of all activities for the protection, rescue and rehabilitation of children. It will also ensure that no individual or organization with a criminal past gets the mandate to set up childcare institutions,” the minister said.

The minister thanked the State Government for hosting the meeting of Government representatives and stakeholders from the southern states to discuss the Ministry of Women and Child Development’s interventions and efforts.

She lauded the Prime Minister’s call for ‘Women-led Development’ and highlighted the missions launched by the current government at the Centre. Talking about POSHAN 2.0, she said that it was an amalgamated effort across 18 Union Ministries. “Over 40 crore grass-root intervention events and programmes for creating awareness around the issue of nutrition have been conducted by the Union Ministry in collaboration with the States,” she added.

The Union Minister noted the improvement in sex ratio at birth from 918 to 937, “For the first time, 11.5 lakh Anganwadis are now equipped with growth monitoring devices.” she said.

Irani also talked about other initiatives including Jan Dhan accounts and a 14% increase in budgetary allocation this year under various budget heads for issues concerning women and children. “The PM was insistent on ensuring that every district has a onestop centre for distressed women to avail counselling, medico-legal support and support from the police. 704 such centres are currently functional in India,” she said.

Highlighting objectives of the Mission Vatsalya, Irani said “Objectives of the Mission are to secure healthy and happy childhood for every child in India, to foster a sensitive, supportive, and synchronized ecosystem for the development of children, to assist States/UTs in delivering the mandate of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, to achieve the SDG goals i.e zero hunger, quality education, gender equality by 2030,”

Highlighting the objectives of the Mission Shakti, the minister said, “Broad objectives of the mission are to provide an immediate and comprehensive continuum of care, support and assistance to women affected by violence and in distress, to put in place quality mechanisms for rescue, protection and rehabilitation of women in need of assistance and victims of crime and violence, to create awareness among masses for inducing the mindset change towards women and girls, to collaborate with different Departments for convergence of policies or programmes to create an enabling environment for public-private partnership for women across sectors.”