Govt to allocate land to existing school societies

To implement the provisions of the Right to Education policy, the Delhi government will soon be allocating plots to schools and existing educational societies instead of letting the Delhi Development Authority auction them. However, new educational societies will get the plot through the auction route.

Updated on: Aug 8, 2011, 01:56:35 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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To implement the provisions of the Right to Education policy, the Delhi government will soon be allocating plots to schools and existing educational societies instead of letting the Delhi Development Authority auction them. However, new educational societies will get the plot through the auction route.

The new policy approved by the Delhi cabinet recently also says that half of the plots will be reserved for Kendriya Vidalayas, run by the HRD ministry and the state government's Navodaya Vidayalas.

The remaining plots will be given to private educational trusts. Around 80% of the plots will be reserved for existing societies and 20% for new societies.

The government schools and existing societies will get plots through allotment at zonal rates, which are much lower than the market rate.

However, new societies will get plots through auction as per the market rate.

In a reply to a Right to Information application to Subhash Aggarwal, Delhi government said because of DDA's auction policy, no land has been allotted to schools in the past 15 years, thereby hampering the implementation of the Right to Education law which mandates compulsory education to children in six to 14 age group.

"This (RTE) law will require setting up of more neighbourhood schools to bridge the gap between the demand and supply of educational institutions," the Delhi government said, while justifying its decision to alter plot disbursement policy for schools.

Justifying the land allocation policy in place of the auction policy, the Delhi government also said that the government and private sector are therefore required to join hands in setting up new schools.

The decision, vetted by HRD ministry and Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna, says the prohibitive price of land was serving as a stumbling block for educational societies to meet operational costs through tuition fees only.

As per the new policy, a land allotment committee under the chief secretary will allocate plots for the government and private schools.

Each year, the DDA will be required to inform the Delhi government about the plots that are available for allocation to schools.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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