Court clears way for nursery admissions

The path has been cleared for the nursery admission process to begin in Delhi — much to the relief of hassled parents. Turning down the plea of unaided private schools, the Delhi high court on Monday gave its nod to new nursery admission guidelines.

The path has been cleared for the nursery admission process to begin in Delhi — much to the relief of hassled parents. Turning down the plea of unaided private schools, the Delhi high court on Monday gave its nod to new nursery admission guidelines.

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The verdict means unaided private schools will have no ‘management quota’ and majority of children will be selected from among those residing within an 8-km radius of the school.

The private schools had moved the HC seeking a stay on the new norms at least for this year’s admissions. Seeing no “life or death issue” in the matter, a division bench of Chief Justice NV Ramana and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw declined to interfere with the new norm at this stage saying it would create “confusion and would be detrimental to the interest of children and parents”.

Unaided private schools have complained that their autonomy in the student selection process has been taken away.

The new norms were issued by Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung on December 18. It gives 70 out of 100 points to the ‘neighbourhood’ criteria giving children living within an 8-km radius of the school a priority in admission.

The 20% ‘management quota’ has been eliminated leaving a 5% ‘staff quota’ at the discretion of the schools. There is also a 5% girl’s quota for co-ed schools and the mandatory 25% EWS quota. The remaining 65% of seats will be allotted to open category.

Though the L-G’s order was issued without consulting any cabinet minister in Delhi, the bench was satisfied that the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government supported the as yet untested guidelines. The AAP government had told the HC that it was ready to correct and learn from this year’s experience.