Children in shelter-homes get Aadhaar linked to 'Track Child' portal
Aadhaar cards of over 30,000 children living in child care institutions have been linked to "Track Child" portal in a bid to bolster the information base on the number of children under institutional care amid reports of children going missing from shelter homes. "Track Child" functions as a central database of all those children who have gone missing in different parts of the country.
Over 250,000 children living in 9,000 child care institutions
The portal will aid coordination between child homes, police departments, and state governments. 30,835 Aadhaar card numbers have been linked till now, said a Women and Child Development official. There are 261,566 children living in over 9,000 Child Care Institutions (CCIs) across India.
Children's Aadhaar cards help in finding their parents
Aadhaar enrolment procedure by CCIs at times have led authorities to find parents of the child as during enrolment it was found that children already had an Aadhaar card which had their address. The aim is also helping in finding the child who had gone missing from child care institutions, as when the child tries to enroll somewhere, his whereabouts would become known.
18 girls were recently reported missing in UP shelter home
The move comes amid reports of children going missing from child care institutions. About 18 girls were recently reported missing from a shelter home in Deoria where reports of alleged sexual harassment of girls surfaced. As reported by National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), a total of 68,874, 60,443, and 63,407 children were reported missing during the year 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively.
