ADOPTION LAWS: CHALLENGES CONCERNING PROCEDURE FROM HUMAN RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE parents, especially foreigners, fall in the trap of child traffickers to avoid long waiting of two to three years. However, to revamp the procedure in 2016, a list called as immediate placement was also introduced to bypass a long waiting period if they chose to adopt children from this list comprising of older children (above five years of age) and children with special needs, but it also didn’t prove to be effective. Adoption statistics on the working of CARA is revealed as under:37 Year Inter-country Adoption In-country Adoption 2015-2016 3011 666 2016-2017 3210 578 2017-2018 3276 651 2018-2019 3374 653 2019-2020 3351 394 2020-2021 3142 417 2021-2022 2991 414 3.1 Critical Analysis of Functioning of CARA The statistics show that both inter-country and in-country adoption has decreased at a striking rate in recent years to 2991 and 414, respectively. The declining rate of adoption as per numbers provided by CARA itself highlights the complex procedure of adoption in India. The picture gets grimmer in knowing that with depleting rate of adoption, disruption or dissolution are on rise as suggested by an information obtained under the Right to Information Act, 2005, that in the two years between April 2017 and March 2019, 275 children had been returned to the system across states—almost five per cent of the number of children adopted in India in the same period.38 Now to understand the issues in entirety, the author has critically analysed the following provisions: Labelling or Branding of Children: The labelling or branding of children as abandoned, orphaned or surrendered is not appropriate for the child’s psychology, as it creates trauma in 37 38 supra note 30 Shrabonti Bagchi, ‘The Returned’ available at: https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/the-returned-1569587584096.html (Visited on October 10, 2022) 81