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Formulate policy for naming abandoned children: Bombay High Court to state

A division bench of justice SC Dharmadhikari and justice Dr Shalini Phansalkar Joshi gave the state four weeks to come up with this policy.

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The Bombay High Court on Thursday directed the government to formulate a policy for naming abandoned children who are kept in children's homes till the time they turn into an adult.

A division bench of justice SC Dharmadhikari and justice Dr Shalini Phansalkar Joshi gave the state four weeks to come up with this policy.

The court said: "If everything is done by the court, then the government will stand on the rooftops and proclaim loudly that the court is interfering with its working."

It added: "Dogs also need an identity to survive in society and you (the government) randomly give names to the children without even giving them a surname, which is required for all future formalities."

Advocate Sandhesh Shukhla — appearing for a person who was kept in a children home and then left it on reaching adulthood — said: "The court gave this direction while hearing a petition filed by an abandoned person who had approached the court seeking that the children's home in Chembur, where he had grown up, be ordered to correct his birth date in their records."

The person, who is now working as a fitter at the Mazgaon docks, was found abandoned near Grant Road railway station in 1993, when he was five years old. The child told the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) about his mother and uncle, but they were nowhere to be found. Later, the committee shifted him to a children's home. However, his date of birth in the records maintained there was registered as 1986 instead of 1988.

While hearing this petition in April, the court had asked the government about the procedure it adopts to name abandoned children. The affidavit filed by the government stated that the CWC or the superintendent of the children's home suggested names, middle names and surnames to the child, and there was no procedure in place for officially naming children.

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