A Commission created by Section 3 of its own Act: what the NCPCR is meant to watch

Background

Child rights in India have a national watchdog with a statutory base rather than an executive one. The Ministry of Women & Child Development set it up under Section 3 of its parent law, the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights (CPCR) Act, 2005, and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights was constituted in 2007. Its remit is to protect, promote and defend child rights across the country. A large part of that work is monitoring how laws relating to children are actually implemented, and the laws named for it include the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act of 2009, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act of 2012, and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act of 2015. It is Section 109 of the juvenile justice law that gives the monitoring role to the National and State Commissions. Below them sit Child Welfare Committees, which act for children in need of care and protection and watch over Child Care Institutions, and Juvenile Justice Boards, which handle children in conflict with law. Complaints reach the Commission through its own online portals, among them e-BaalNidaan and the POCSO e-Box.