New Delhi, Sep 13: The Congress on Tuesday accused the apex child rights body NCPCR of being an affiliate of the RSS after it asked the Election Commission of initiating action against Rahul Gandhi for allegedly "misusing children as political tools" in the party's Bharat Jodo Yatra.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said these are efforts to derail the Bharat Jodo Yatra, in which Rahul Gandhi is participating.

"The NCPCR started by Dr. Manmohan Singh's Government has now become a RSS affiliate nothing less (sic). Pathetic efforts to derail Bharat Jodo Yatra," Ramesh said on Twitter.

The NCPCR has asked the Election Commission to initiate necessary action and inquiry into a complaint against the Congress and Gandhi for allegedly "misusing children as political tools" in the party's Bharat Jodo Yatra.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights said it is in receipt of a complaint wherein it has been alleged that Gandhi and the Jawahar Bal Manch are targeting children with political intentions and making them to get involved in political activities.

The NCPCR charged that this is a violation of Election Commission rules which say that only adults can be part of a political party.

"Since there is a prima-facie violation of child rights. Further, use of children as props to fulfil political agenda is child abuse which can have a severe long term impact on their mental health and is against is Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The commission thereby requests your good offices to look into the matter and have a thorough inquiry of the events and take necessary action against the political party and its members who have been mentioned in the complaint, it said in its letter to the Election Commission.

The Congress has launched the Bharat Jodo Yatra with an aim to strengthen the party's grassroots level connection. The yatra, which began on September 7, will cover 3,570 km from Kanyakumari to Kashmir over a period of five months.

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New Delhi (PTI): A total of 23,058 people, comprising 9,482 men and 13,576 women, were reported missing in Delhi in 2024, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

Of the total, 5,491 were children below the age of 18 — 1,571 boys, 3,920 girls.

The city recorded 17,567 fresh adult missing persons cases in 2024, comprising 7,911 men and 9,656 women.

According to the NCRB data, released on Wednesday, 14,637 men, 18,238 women and six transgender persons were still missing from previous years.

At the latest count, in 2024, Delhi had a total of 55,939 missing persons cases — 24,119 men, 31,814 women and six transgender persons.

In 2024, police traced or collected 28,392 missing persons, including 12,182 men, 16,208 women and two transgender persons.

Only half of the men and half of the women who went missing could be traced.

A total of 27,547 missing persons – 11,937 men, 15,606 women, four transgender persons — were yet to be untraced by the end of the year, the data showed.

The data also revealed that 5,352 children from previous years remained untraced at the beginning of 2024.

The number of still missing boys was 1,621, and the number of missing girls was 3,729. Two transgender children were yet to be found.

After adding the pending cases from previous years, the total number of missing children cases handled in 2024 rose to 10,843.

The police traced or recovered 6,762 missing children — 2,030 boys, 4,732 girls.

The recovery rate stood at 63.6 per cent for boys and 61.9 per cent for girls, while no transgender child was traced.

By the end of 2024, a total of 4,081 children remained untraced, 1,162 of them boys, 2,917 girls, and two transgender children.