-The Hindu
Low Muslim representation appears to be a striking feature of this year’s admissions to nursery classes in Delhi’s private schools. Of 92 schools which provided some sort of information on their websites, as many as 20 (or their branches) admitted no Muslim child while 17 admitted only one Muslim child each.
While the sketchy nature of available data – with only a few schools willing to reveal the numbers of Muslim applicants — makes it difficult conclusively to establish the prevalence of bias — information from individual schools suggests Muslims applied in fairly significant numbers this year and were, on average, less likely to be selected for admission than non-Muslims. For example, against 170 available seats, the Pusa Road branch of Springdales School received 2443 applications of which 155 were from Muslim children. The school admitted two Muslim children in the Economically Weaker Section category. Delhi Public School, East of Kailash, received 2997 applications – of which 269 were from Muslims – against 180 vacancies. This school, which is close to many Muslim neighbourhoods, admitted five Muslim children in all.
On Sunday, social activist Abdul Khaliq wrote to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, alleging that these skewed figures amounted to “denial of quality education” to Muslim children. In a letter to Ms. Dikshit, copies of which were sent to Union Minister of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal and principals of all major private schools in the Capital, he said : “`Data collected by us on the number of Muslim children admitted to nursery class this academic year in the city’s popular private schools indicate dismally low numbers. Although Muslims comprise about 15 per cent of the population, less than 0.5 per cent of Muslim children have been admitted (in these schools).”
Mr. Khaliq, who said distressed Muslim parents had approached him for help, looked at a total of 179 schools. Of these, 87 failed to upload admission details on their websites as mandated by the Directorate of Education.
The Kirti Nagar branch of Springdales School admitted no Muslim child while the school’s Dhaula Kuan branch admitted one Muslim child.
Of 150 children admitted by Blue Bells, Lajpat Nagar, two were Muslim. The ratio for Indian School, Sadiq Nagar, was three of 120.