The government has cleared a proposal to put a complete ban on employment of children up to the age of 14 both in hazardous and non-hazardous work by amending an anti-child labour Act. The Union Cabinet, which met in New Delhi Tuesday, approved bringing the amendment to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, which has also penal provisions for non compliance. As per the provision of the proposed law, a person found guilty of giving employment to children would be liable to a maximum three years imprisonment or fine up to a maximum of 50,000 rupees. Officials said, Children between 14 to 18 years will also be defined as "adolescents" in the amended Act. The amendment will also fulfill the mandate of Right to Education for free and compulsory education for children in the age group of 6-15 years.

 The Supreme Court has directed the states to file their responses within four weeks on a PIL alleging that on an average 90,000 children go missing in the country every year of which 30,000 remain untraced. A bench of justices Altamas Kabir and J Chelameshwar passed the direction after noting that most of the states have so far not filed their replies despite its directions on the 16th of March. Counsels urged the bench to issue a direction to the Centre to formulate a national plan to tackle the menace of missing children and also to define the term missing children which has not been done so far in any statute.

Assam Government will launch Infant and Young Child Nutrition, IYCN, programme to reduce malnutrition and anemia by early next month. Official sources said that, it will be carried out at Lahowal Block in Dibrugarh and Sipajahr Block in Darrang district on pilot basis under Chief Minister Vision for Women and Children 2016 programme. National Rural Health Mission, Social Welfare, Education Department and UNICEF will jointly implement the programme. It may be recalled that the main aim of Infant and Young Child Nutrition programme is to achieve Continuum of Care for children under two along with improve nutritional status and reduce anemia among adolescents and pregnant women. Continuum of care includes the care covering for stages starting form adolescents, pregnant and lactating mothers and children less than 5 years of age. Assam has recorded 35 percent underweight birth and 72 pregnant women as anemic. Another objective of the programme is to achieve 100 percent exclusive breast feeding which is presently 63 percent. Under the program, IFA supplement, nutrition education and counseling, quality ante-natal care, Vitamin -A will be given to children, adolescents and pregnant women.