Nursery admission: Delhi govt to seek review of High Court stay order

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Utkarsh Anand : New Delhi, Thu Jan 19 2012, 03:33 hrs
The schools did not favour a change in neighbourhood criterion for students
Even as a single-judge court stayed the Education department’s December 16 order on nursery admissions, the Delhi government on Wednesday submitted before a larger bench that it would seek a clarification or review of the order.

Arguing before a division bench headed by Acting Chief Justice A K Sikri, government counsel Ruchi Sindhwani said a clarification or review of the order would be required, considering that it did not mention which part of the December 16 notification by the Directorate of Education (DoE) was being stayed.

The order in question read: “Till the next date of hearing, the operation of the impugned order, dated December 16, shall remain stayed.”

To this, Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw remarked: “...otherwise schools, under this order, can choose not to follow other directives of the December 16 notification as well.”

Sindhwani agreed to the apprehension raised by the court and said they would move the court of Justice Hima Kohli to seek a review of the impugned interim order. Justice Kohli had passed the order on a petition by a group of schools, which were aggrieved by a change in the “neighbourhood” criterion, asking private schools to give admission to EWS category students on a par with general category students.

Under the RTE Act, “neighbourhood” is defined as a distance of one kilometre from the school concerned. According to the government counsel, the change in criterion was altered so that EWS students, irrespective of the distance from schools, could get admission like others. The schools, however, said that the DoE was not empowered to pass the order.

On Wednesday, Sindhwani and Ashok Agarwal, counsel for NGO Social Jurist, produced Justice Kohli’s order and sought the Bench’s indulgence. But Justice Sikri turned down Agarwal’s request that the other matter be called to the court, stating that the bench was concerned only with deciding whether nursery could be treated as the feeder class for promotion to KG. “We are adjudicating on a very short point, whether nursery could be treated as a part of formal schooling or not, and whether promotion to KG is valid. Let the other court decide the petition on the EWS ‘neighbourhood’ criterion,” the bench said.

The court reserved its judgement on the matter.