The passport authority has come to the rescue of those abandoned and orphaned children who are adopted by couples or individuals from other countries and are facing difficulties in obtaining a birth certificate, a mandatory requirement for obtaining passport.
The passport authority has come to the rescue of those abandoned and orphaned children who are adopted by couples or individuals from other countries and are facing difficulties in obtaining a birth certificate, a mandatory requirement for obtaining passport.
As per the new rule, authorities can also accept the date of birth recorded in court, attached with a copy of an NOC from the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA).
CARA, an autonomous body under the ministry of women & child development, acts as the central authority to deal with inter-country adoptions of orphans and abandoned and surrendered children through its associated agencies in accordance with the provisions of the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption, 1993, ratified by Government of India in 2003.
The development became possible after the matter was taken up by the ministry of women and child development with the ministry of external affairs (MEA), under which the passport department operates.
A circular issued on March 19, undersigned by joint secretary and chief passport officer Muktesh Pardeshi, stated, "The matter has been examined in this ministry (MEA) to mitigate the problems faced by such children."
As per the provisions of the Hague Convention, the Indian government had asked all its passport department offices to expedite the process of issuing passports to inter-country adopted children. Most importantly, the much required police verification has been done away with for such children. Further, no prior appointment is required for submission of such applications.
Sources, however, said despite the above measures, some of the children were finding it difficult to get their passports.
According to the statistics available with CARA, 175 children were adopted by couples/individuals from other countries between April 2014 and September 2014.
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