Order on admission norms stayed

Utkarsh Anand : New Delhi, Wed Jan 18 2012, 03:10 hrs
The RTE Act defines neighbourhood as a distance of 1 km from school
As the rush for nursery admission in the city continues, the Delhi High Court has stayed the Education department’s notification that laid down guidelines to be followed by private schools for admitting children to nursery.

In an interim order, Justice Hima Kohli stayed the December 16 notification issued by the Directorate of Education (DoE) while hearing a petition by Federation of Public Schools, a registered society comprising 326 private unaided schools in Delhi.

Since the DoE order had guidelines for nursery admission along with the schedule for admission in 2012-13, a stay order by the court means that no school in the city is technically and legally bound by the directives.

The association had moved the court seeking to get the December 16 order quashed, contending it was violative of the Right to Education Act.

The DoE order has a criterion which requires schools to reserve 25 per cent seats under the economically weaker sections (EWS) category. The guidelines state that no school shall deny admission to a child under the EWS category on the basis of distance or neighbourhood, “so long as the residence of that child falls within the distance criterion devised by the school for general category children”.

The RTE Act defines “neighbourhood” as a distance of one kilometre from the school. But for general category students, there is no bar on granting admission in nursery to children who stay farther. The DoE order meant that schools, which had vacant seats under the EWS category, could no longer deny admission to a child under this category, citing the restriction of “neighbourhood” criteria.

The schools challenged the change in the condition and claimed that the DoE was not empowered under the RTE Act to pass such an order and only the Delhi government, by way of passing a notification, could have done this. They said that the order aimed at “illegally” filling up 25 per cent EWS seats in private schools even though thousands of seats in government schools remained vacant. “The order is to compel and coerce private schools to fill up the seats,” the petition alleged.

Appearing for the government, counsel Zubeda Begum defended the DoE’s step and said the order was passed keeping in view the RTE Act, which asks for providing education to all children.

She raised the point that the “neighbourhood” criterion was altered because in spite of the 25 per cent EWS reservation criterion, most of these seats remained vacant in private schools in 2011-12 and schools sought to justify this on the ground that there were inadequate EWS applicants in the neighbourhood.

“Consider a school in an upmarket residential colony, where will you find an EWS category child residing in the neighbourhood? That is why we deemed it right to change the condition,” she argued.

Justice Kohli noted that although the change in condition prima facie appeared to be in the spirit of the RTE Act, once the government had framed the rules, changing a clause would amount to amending it by an executive order, which may not be allowed under law.

The court sought a detailed response from the government on this and stayed the operation of the DoE order till the next date of hearing in February.

A larger bench of the court, headed by its Acting Chief Justice, will on Wednesday resume hearing into another PIL that has challenged the DoE order on age criteria and other points.