New Delhi: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has ruled out the possibility of a legislation to make parental alienation a crime under the category of "child abuse", but has made several recommendations to ensure the care and protection of children of estranged parents.

The commission has, however, suggested that the women and child development ministry come out with guidelines to safeguards the interests of children of estranged parents in view of the rising number of matrimonial disputes across the country in which kids are ultimately the major sufferers.

In a recent directive to the women and child development and law ministries, the NCPCR made the following recommendations:

- Framing of fresh child access and custody guidelines

- Introducing a draft protocol for managing children facing parental alienation

- Attaching mental health professionals and trained child psychologist to all family courts

- Making it mandatory for estranged parents to attend special workshops on children at the time of filing petitions for custodial rights

- Requesting judicial academies to train judges dealing with child custody cases on issues such as parental alienation, personality disorders and child psychology.

Apart from these, the law ministry was requested to include subjects on parenting rights and duties in the curriculum of all law colleges.

The NCPCR guidelines were issued following a request from an NGO, Child Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting, that had submitted a memorandum to the women and child development ministry demanding a legislation to make parental alienation a "child abuse" crime and the introduction of punishment for such parents.

The NGO also wanted a legislation to make "shared parenting" mandatory.

Now, the custody of a child is given to either parent by courts mostly on the basis of the particular facts of the case, though the law leans towards men as the guardian, given their ability to pay for education and maintenance.

But the NGO feels that parenting rights should be granted equally to both parents. Courts across the country are inundated with lakhs of cases relating to custodial rights.

NGO president Kumar Jahgirdar, however, told this paper that the organisation was not satisfied with the recommendations of the NCPCR and would soon file a PIL in the Supreme Court for making "shared parenting" a mandatory right for both parents.

"Since matrimonial disputes are increasing in the country and lakhs of children are being deprived of the love and affection of one of their parents, mostly the non-custodial parents are fathers and children are losing access to their natural father. This is leading to the creation of a father-less society and such children are increasingly taking to crime, according to various studies," Jahgirdar said.

He said the NGO welcomed the other recommendations of the NCPCR.