India, July 25 -- The Punjab government has announced a stricter approach to combat child begging under "Project Jeevanjot-2", but the initiative faces challenges due to the lack of child care institutes in nearly half of the state's districts.

Last week, minister for social security, women and child development Baljit Kaur introduced "Project Jeevanjot-2", which includes a provision for conducting DNA tests on adults found accompanying begging children. This is to confirm whether the adult is the child's biological parent. If parentage is not immediately confirmed, the child will be placed in a government-protected child care institute.

Barnala district child protection officer Gurjeet Kaur confirmed that the project is already active ...