Missing child: CWC secretary summoned
The Hindu
Probe on into adoption proceedings
Kerala State Council for Child Welfare (CWC) general secretary Shiju Khan was summoned by Women and Child Development Director T.V. Anupama on Sunday afternoon in connection with the case of the alleged forced separation of a child from its mother and its adoption through the council.
The mother Anupama S. Chandran had alleged that her parents had taken away the child and handed it over to the council without her consent. She had also alleged that despite approaching the District Child Welfare Committee with a complaint on her missing child, the procedures for adoption were not halted.
The Women and Child Development Department is carrying out a departmental probe to ascertain the procedures adopted and their timeline from the time the child, thought to be Anupama’s, was received at the council. Anupama’s father P.S. Jayachandran, a CPI(M) leader, had said that the child had been left at the council’s Ammathottil electronic cradle.
Several principals of government and private schools in Delhi on Tuesday said the Directorate of Education (DoE) circular from a day earlier, directing schools to conduct classes in ‘hybrid’ mode, had caused confusion regarding day-to-day operations as they did not know how many students would return to school from Wednesday and how would teachers instruct in two modes — online and in person — at once. The DoE circular on Monday had also stated that the option to “exercise online mode of education, wherever available, shall vest with the students and their guardians”. Several schoolteachers also expressed confusion regarding the DoE order. A government schoolteacher said he was unsure of how to cope with the resumption of physical classes, given that the order directing government offices to ensure that 50% of the employees work from home is still in place. On Monday, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) had, on the orders of the Supreme Court, directed schools in Delhi-NCR to shift classes to the hybrid mode, following which the DoE had issued the circular. The court had urged the Centre’s pollution watchdog to consider restarting physical classes due to many students missing out on the mid-day meals and lacking the necessary means to attend classes online. The CAQM had, on November 20, asked schools in Delhi-NCR to shift to the online mode of teaching.