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EWS admissions: HC breather for derecognised Vivek High School
High court stays Chandigarh administration’s order on the condition that the school will admit students from EWS category as mandated under the RTE Act
The Punjab and Haryana high court has stayed the Chandigarh administration’s decision to derecognise Vivek High School, Sector 38, for not giving admission to EWS students in 2023-24 and for not committing to do so in the 2024-25 session either.
The order was passed by the high court bench of justice Vinod S Bhardwaj, acting on the plea from the school, challenging UT’s order.
The court has stayed UT’s order with the condition that the school will admit students from the economic weaker section (EWS) category as mandated under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act.
Vivek High Scool was the second institute in the city to be derecognised by the administration last year. Earlier, in May, it had derecognised St Kabir Public School, Sector 26, on similar grounds. St Kabir had also got relief from court last month on similar conditions.
Run by the Bhagwant Singh Charitable Trust and started in 1984, Vivek High School got a minority tag on February 4, 2016, nearly four years after the 2012 Supreme Court judgment, wherein it was held that minority institutes are not bound to reserve seats for EWS category students under the RTE Act.
It is among a dozen odd schools that got minority tag after the SC order.
In 2017, a single-judge bench had declared that it was not a minority institute. However, an appeal against this order is pending before the division bench of the high court.
The school’s chairperson HS Mamik is also the president of a private schools’ body in Chandigarh, called “Independent Schools’ Association”.
The school was issued a show-cause notice on December 16 for not giving 25% reservation to EWS and other disadvantaged groups under the RTE Act. On December 27, UT derecognised the school with effect from April 1, 2024.
The school in its plea before the court sought quashing of the December 27 order, claiming that it passed in an illegal and arbitrary manner without any jurisdiction.
Besides other arguments, it also claimed that the school was not obligated to admit students from EWS category as claimed by the administration citing rules under the land allotment policy for educational institutions in UT.
While the city has 22 minority schools, only two schools have got a no-objection certificate from the UT administration. As many as 13 of these schools had opted for the minority status after 2012. The city has a total of 82 private schools. There has been a spurt for minority status after the 2012 SC order.
Meanwhile, Vivek was the only school that hadn’t given consent, but as EWS admissions opened from Wednesday, the school was also brought on board. For the first time, since the implementation of RTE, all non-minority schools will participate in EWS admissions this year.
While help desks are in place at all government schools and non-minority schools for filling up the forms, around 30 applicants filled the form on the first day. A total of 815 EWS seats are up for grabs in non-minority schools for the 2024-25 session.
