Open charm hadrons with strange and non-strange mesons have been discovered in recent years. We study the spectra of several newly observed resonances by different collaborations like BaBar (del Amo Sanchez et al., Phys Rev D 82:111101, 2010) and LHCb (Aaij et al. [LHCb Collaboration], J High Energy Phys 1309:145, 2013) etc. Using an effective Lagrangian approach based on heavy quark symmetry and chiral dynamics, we explore the strong decay widths and branching ratios of various resonances and suggest their $$J^{p}$$ values. We try to fit the experimental data to find the coupling constants involved in the strong decays through pseudo-scalar mesons. The present work also discusses the possible spin–parity assignments of recently observed states by the LHCb Collaboration. The tentative assignment of the newly discovered state $$D_{J}^{*}(3000)$$ can be by natural parity states $$(0^{+},1^{-},2^{+},3^{-},\ldots )$$ , while $$D_{J}(3000)$$ can be identified with unnatural parity states like $$(0^{-},1^{+},2^{-},3^{+},\ldots )$$ . Therefore, the missing doublets 2S, 2D, 1F, 2P, and 3S can be thought of as filled up with these states. We study the two-body strong decay widths and branching ratios of missing doublets and plot the branching ratios vs. the mass of the decaying particle. These plots are used to thoroughly analyze all assignments to $$D_{J}(3000)$$ and various possibilities for the $$J^{P}$$ values.