Govt’s reply sought on PIL against rules

Delhi high court on Wednesday sought a response from the Delhi government on a PIL seeking quashing of nursery admission guidelines framed by it on the grounds that they violated the Right to Education Act.

Delhi high court on Wednesday sought a response from the Delhi government on a PIL seeking quashing of nursery admission guidelines framed by it on the grounds that they violated the Right to Education Act.

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Chief justice Dipak Misra and justice Manmohan also issued notice to the central government and asked them to file their reply within six weeks. 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 giving private schools a free hand to formulate their own admission criteria was 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/students,” the PIL said.

Agarwal argued that in September 2006, the high court had constituted a panel of experts headed by chairman of CBSE Ashok Ganguly to look into all issues related to nursery admission. It enumerated three basic principles 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 for all schools. “The only agreeable point was 25% reservation for children from economically weaker sections, but the permission to schools to formulate their own policy to fill the remaining 75% seats could not be allowed,” as per the petition.