3.18 lakh children missing since 2014: Irani

 A total of 3.18 lakh children, including 52,272 in Madhya Pradesh, have gone missing in the country since 2014, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani said on Friday. In response to a question in the Lok Sabha, Irani presented the data according to which Madhya Pradesh was followed by West Bengal with 47,744 missing children and Gujarat (43,658).

In Delhi, 37,418 children were reported missing while zero cases were recorded from Nagaland, Mizoram, Lakshadweep, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the data showed. The details of missing children were uploaded on web portals 'TrackChild' and 'Khoya-Paya' which are used to track them, she said. The total number of missing children reported and uploaded on the portals were 3,18,748 from January 1, 2014, to December 4, 2019, according to the data.

"A mechanism has been developed to share the unmatched images of missing children, recovered children and children under institutional and non-institutional care with circumstances marked as 'missing' across the country of TrackChild with Delhi Police on regular basis through common Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) server area from 16th May, 2018 onwards," Irani said.

Details of the number of children traced out of these 3.18 lakh children was not given in the response.