NEW DELHI: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has issued a notice to Lancet for its report that more than 19 lakh children in India lost at least parent or during the pandemic.
The NCPCR chairperson Priyank Kanoongo has asked Lancet to share the data and explain how they have arrived at the figure.
“We have written to them and issued a notice. We asked them to share the foundation of their data,” Kanoongo told this daily.
He said NCPCR, which comes under the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, is collecting data on orphaned and street children on the orders of the Supreme Court and also running a website in which data collected from the states is uploaded.
According to NCPCR, 10,000 children lost their parents due to Covid and other reasons, while over 140,000 children lost a single parent.
The study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, said globally 52 lakh children were orphaned. It said that 19 lakh were from India.