Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Around 4,000 children living in Child Care Institutions (CCIs) in the state face an uncertain future. The state government, through district collectors, is mounting pressure on the NGOs running these institutions to handover the children to their parents or relatives.
This is being done in the middle of the academic session and is bound to disrupt the education of children living in CCIs. The move has also created a sense of fear and insecurity among the inmates. The around 60 CCIs in the state house some 4,000 children in need of care and protection and those in conflict with law. Of these, only four are being run by the government and the rest by NGOs.
Earlier this year, the Central government had asked state governments to take over the CCIs being run by the NGOs and manage them themselves. Later, the Centre wrote to the states making it clear that it won’t pay its share of 60 per cent in the grants for running the CCIs from the next fiscal year (2025-26) unless the state government takes them over.
The State women and child development department, in July this year, wrote to the district collectors asking them to ensure that children residing in CCIs are ‘rehabilitated’ by sending them back to their parents, sponsorship, adoption or foster care. Now, the CCIs are being pressurized by the district collectors to do so.
Madhya Pradesh Integrated Child Protection Scheme NGOs Association, a body of the NGOs running the NGOs in the state, says that the move was in violation of the Juvenile Justice Act was solely meant to reduce the number of children staying in CCIs so as to lighten the burden on the state government. Secretary of the Association, Vinay Patel, said that the very fact that the children are staying in CCIs shows that their parents are either unwilling or incapable of bringing up. “Then how would the interests of the children be served by handing them over to their parents and that too in the middle of the academic session,” he asks. The director of a CCI said that more than 25 of the children were studying in schools. “We contacted the parents of some children and they say they don’t want to take them back. What are we supposed to do”, she asks.
BL Sharma, who runs a CCI in Morena said that in any case, they were not the authority to decide whether the children should go back to their parents. Only the District Child Welfare Committee can do it. The NGOs are being asked to give an undertaking that they would run the institution without government aid. “Our monthly expenses are in lakhs. From where will we bring the money? This is ridiculous,” says the director of another CCI.
The NGOs say that they would move court if the government does not withdraw its directives. “We don’t want the children to be pushed back into the hell from where they were rescued,” said the manager of a CCI .
