New Delhi: Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi on Monday asked child-care homes run by the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) to "come back into" the government's system of adoption services.

"Met the delegation of Missionaries of Charity (MoC)-led by Sister Mary Prema Pierick, who is heading the organisation after Mother Teresa. I requested them to come back into the CARA system of adoption so that children in the 79 MoC homes can go into family care," the Minister for Women and Child Development tweeted.

In 2015, an ideological row erupted between the ministry and the Mother Teresa-founded organisation over issues such as the MoC's denial to give children to separated or divorced parents.

Following this, the Missionaries of Charity decided to stop putting children up for adoption under the government's Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) system.

On Monday, Gandhi met a MoC delegation led by Sister Mary Prema Pierick, who heads the organisation after Mother Teresa, and requested them "to come back into" the CARA system of adoption.

The CARA functions as the nodal body for the adoption of children and is mandated to monitor and regulate in-country and inter-country adoptions.

The Union minister said the move aims to bring children living in the 79 MoC homes into family care.

The Minister said Sister Prema has agreed to her request and would be on board with present laws on child adoption.

"Prema agreed to my request to work jointly on each of these homes so that the children in the MoC homes can be on-boarded into CARINGS expeditiously," she tweeted.

The Women and Child Development Ministry and the MoC have been involved in a number of rows in the past.

In July this year, Gandhi had ordered all states to get the child-care homes run by the MoC inspected, after cases of alleged illegal adoptions carried out by the homes came to light.

A shelter home run by the MoC in Ranchi has allegedly been involved in "selling" three children and "giving away" another one.

Taking cognisance of the cases of alleged illegal adoptions carried out by the MoC in Jharkhand, Gandhi had ordered all the states to get the child-care homes run by the organisation inspected immediately, the ministry had said in a statement in July.

With agency inputs