NEW DELHI: Can the Supreme Court order granting relief to inter-state transfer quota children in nursery admissions be confined to those whose parents had challenged scrapping of the category?

A writ petition by Dinesh Kumar argued that it would not be proper to confine relief only to those students whose parents had challenged the Delhi lieutenant governor's decision to scrap the inter-state transfer quota midway through the admissions.

He said many parents, who were eagerly awaiting the outcome of the petitions in the Supreme Court on scrapping of inter-state transfer quota in nursery admissions, were left high and dry and their children faced the prospect of not getting into any school.

A bench of Justices B S Chauhan and A K Sikri issued notice to the Delhi government seeking its response to the petition after advocate Rohan Thawani pleaded that benefit of the apex court's May 7 order should be available to all children eligible for admission under the category.

On May 7, a bench of Justices H L Dattu, M Y Eqbal and S A Bobde had lifted stay on nursery admissions while but not before setting aside the Delhi government's February 27 notification, which had scrapped inter-state transfer quota. The notification was issued as authorities had discovered a large number of fake transfer certificates given by parents to get their children admitted to nursery classes.

Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Eqbal said the government could not have changed the rules midway through the process of admission which amounted to disqualifying children on the basis of a criterion which was not there when the nursery admissions started.

However, the bench clarified that the relief would be available only to 24 children whose parents had approached the court challenging the February 27 notification. Kumar, who filed the petition through advocate Pooja Dhar, said limiting it to only 24 cases would affect the right to equal treatment of other similarly placed children who were otherwise eligible for admission under the inter-state transfer category.