Advocacy & Government: A bill to amend the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 15th 2021. It seeks to authorise district magistrates (DM) and additional district magistrates (ADM) to monitor the functions of agencies responsible for the implementation of the Act.
The amendments will allow district officials to take a call on adoption applications, strengthen child welfare committees, and stipulate eligibility conditions for selection of the committee members.
The bill further seeks to categorise offences wherein the maximum sentence is more than seven years imprisonment. However, no minimum sentence has been provided for ‘serious offences’ under the Juvenile Justice Act. ‘Serious offences’ include offences for which the punishment under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) is imprisonment between three and seven years.
On the child welfare committee, the bill stipulates that no person will be appointed as a member unless they have been actively involved in health, education, or welfare activities pertaining to children for at least seven years, or are practicing professionals with a degree in child psychology and/or psychiatry, law, social work, sociology, human development, and so on.
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