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A bench of Justices Nageshwar Rao and B.R.Gavai was hearing the suo motu case concerning Contagion of COVID-19 Virus In Children Protection Homes.

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and States/UT to come up with suggestions regarding the manner in which children in need of care and protection are rescued and rehabilitated.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) told the Supreme Court today that there maybe 15-20 lakh children living in streets in the country.

The court directed the District Magistrate and Collectors from each district of the country to take steps in accordance with Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 2.0 and provide data to the Secretary of Department of Women and Child Welfare, who shall be nodal officer to ensure prompt action is being taken to implement SOP 2.0 of NCPCR.

Further to this, Court directed that this process be taken up immediately. The authorities in the State were directed to identify and provide information to NCPCR which will guide them on what is to be done at later stages. The States/UT were also directed to promptly attend meetings by NCPCR and offer suggestion, voice concerns in this regard.

The NCPCR filed its compliance affidavit through Advocate Swarupama Chaturvedi before Supreme Court bringing to the notice of the court Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 2.0 was prepared on 17th Nov 2020 to strengthen the processes and intervention regarding children in need of care and protection and  the court was informed that SOP 2.0 has been circulated to States and Union Territories. The SOP 2.0 of the NCPCR was prepared taking into account identifying and categorising children as
1) Children without support living on street
2) Children with homes who live in the streets during the day and;
3) Children living on streets with families.

The court further noted that the SOP 2.0 consists of 1) identification of issues and challenges 2) recognising and categorising 3) appropriate intervention 4) process to be followed by authorities and 5) role of authorities while dealing with them.

The court also took note of the fact that 51 religious institutes have been given the task of rescuing children and rehabilitate from child labour and beggary. The court further noted that NCPCR has developed a new link called “CISS” on the Bal Swaraj portal for receiving data from all State/UT to track the rescue and rehabilitation of children in need of care and protection.

The court also directed the registry to change the cause title of the case to IN RE: Children in Need of Care and Protection on suggestion of Shobha Gupta, Advocate.

When the matter was called for hearing, Gaurav Agarwal, Amicus Curiae, told court that a voluntary organisation called ‘Save the children’ along with NCPCR had mapped about 2 lakh children who are living in the streets (Children in need of care and protection). He further submitted that an exercise was conducted in 4 States across 9 cities to map children in need of care and protection. The States where the exercise was conducted are Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow, Chandauli, Prayagraj and Kanpur) West Bengal (Kolkata, Howrah) , Maharashtra (Pune and Nasik) and Delhi. The Amicus Curiae submitted that there were 70,000 children in need of care and protection in Delhi alone.

K.M.Natraj, ASG, appearing for NCPCR submitted that they were holding virtual a virtual meeting with the officials and other stake holders to formulate an action plan to rescue and rehabilitate such children and asked the court to direct the State governments/Union Territories to attend these meeting and ascertain how many children in need of care and protection are there in each State/UT. He further submitted that given that there are 2 lakh children in 9 cities alone, there maybe 15-20 lakh children in need of care and protection across the country. He further sough the court to direct the States/UTs to take steps in accordance to Standard Operating Procedure 2.0 to identify and rehabilitate them.

The matter has now listed on 13th December 2021 for further consideration.

Case title: In Re: Contagion of COVID -19 Virus In Children Protection  Homes.