Premier institutions — Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai — will assist the Supreme Court to track missing children. The development comes after the court found itself “handicapped” owing to inaction by Government agencies.
With thousands of children reported missing from each State, the bench of Justices Madan B lokur and UU lalit on Tuesday expressed its anguish over the lack of concern of the Government to evolve a mechanism to track them out.
This became evident from the fact that the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has no member. “I have checked the website (of Commission) and found not a single person has been appointed in the Commission. Even the Chairman post is vacant,” the bench said.
The observations were made during hearing of a PIl by NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan, that gained international attention recently after its founder Kailash Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize for working on issues of child relief and rehabilitation. Stressing on the need to have a proper mechanism in place to monitor and trace children gone missing, the Court said, “We feel handicapped as the Government is doing nothing.”
Not wishing to leave the matter on a helpless note, the bench sought assistance of FMS to appoint one of its competent faculty members to study the website (trackthemissingchild.gov.in) and suggest how to make it interactive and effective.
It further asked Director, TISS to study the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) on tracking of missing children followed in different States. It even referred a SOP prepared by NAlSA and evolve uniform guidelines to be applied by all States in dealing with such cases.
The bench also felt that police personnel need to be adequately trained and equipped both mentally and physically to handle such complaints. It requested the National Police Academy (NPA), Hyderabad to evolve a training module for police personnel in this regard and directed the Centre to render all assistance in making available any information from States.