Court on Wednesday sought a response from the Delhi government on a PIL
requesting quashing of nursery admission guidelines framed by the
government on the grounds that they violated the Right to Education Act.
The court also issued a notice to the Centre and asked for its reply
within six weeks.
The next date of hearing on the matter is in March next year.
The PIL was filed by civil rights group ‘Social Jurist’
challenging the validity of government’s notification. The NGO’s lawyer
Ashok Agarwal said the guidelines give private schools a free hand to
formulate their own admission criteria, which is against the RTE Act and
Delhi High Court’s previous orders.
“It is based on categorisation of children. The guidelines will
lead to further commercialisation of education at the cost of hapless
parents and students,” the PIL said. The lawyer argued that the High
Court, in September 2006, had constituted a panel of experts headed by
Ashok Ganguly, then Chairman of CBSE, to go into all the issues related
to nursery admissions. Three basic principles were highlighted to evolve
a common admission process — transparency, elimination of interview and
minimising management’s discretion.
The PIL also said the panel had formulated a 100-point scale with emphasis on uniform admission procedure.
“The only agreeable point is 25 per cent reservation for children
from economically weaker sections, but permission to schools to
formulate their own policy to fill the remaining seats should not be
allowed,” the petition read.