Court declines interim relief to Delhi schools against nursery norms

The Delhi High Court today declined any interim relief to unaided recognised private schools which have sought quashing of the notification on nursery admission guidelines.

Justice Manmohan, while issuing notices to Delhi Government and Directorate of Education (DoE), said the petitions required “detailed hearing and it cannot be stayed on the first day“.

Terming the Delhi government’s notification as arbitrary, senior advocate N.K. Kaul, appearing for Action Committee for Unaided Recognised Private Schools, said that at least for the time being the operation of the notification be stayed.

The court, however, refused to stay the notification and fixed the matter for final hearing on March 11.

It, meanwhile, asked the Delhi Government and DoE to file their responses within three weeks.

The plea has been filed challenging the nursery admission guidelines issued by the Lieutenant Governor by which various steps including weightage to neighbourhood kids and abolition of 20 per cent management quota were taken.

It has sought setting aside of the 2014-15 guidelines on the ground that the LG office lacked the power to frame them.

It claimed the guidelines were against the principle of autonomy and the recognised unaided private schools were given the power by the Central government to formulate their own admission criteria for 75 per cent seats.

Central government, the Directorate of Education (DoE) and the office of LG have been made party in the plea.

Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, on 18 December, issued new guidelines for the nursery admissions for the session 2014—15 and took various steps such as scrapping of 20 per cent management quota.

The neighbourhood criteria, which seeks schools to give preference to children living within the radius of six km from school, has been given maximum weightage with 70 points out of 100 in the open category seats. Later, the LG enhanced the criteria to eight kilometre.

The LG, however, had refused to reconsider the decision to scrap the management quota.

Besides these, the applicants who have sibling studying in the same school will get 20 points and five points will be added by default in the application of girls and wards of school alumni.

The guidelines also seek the minority schools to have 25 per cent seats reserved, like other schools, for the economically weaker sections and disadvantaged groups of the society.

The DoE or the Delhi government or the LG does not have the power to fix criteria of admission in unaided private schools, the petition had contended.

The admission process for nursery classes will start from January 15 and the last date for submission of applications is January 31.

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