Delhi schools seek minority status

With many Delhi schools seeking minority status, the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions has asked the Delhi Government to frame separate rules for their regulation.

Published on: May 5, 2006, 12:04:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With many Delhi schools seeking minority status, the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions has asked the Delhi Government to frame separate rules for their regulation.

If the trend in other states is considered, the new regulation may have 50 per cent reservation for the community linked to the institution.

Top Delhi schools like St Columba’s have sought minority certificate from the Commission after the Parliament passed the 93rd Constitutional Amendment empowering states to enforce reservation for educational and socially backward classes except in the minority education institutions.

“This implies that minority institutions can’t be brought under any format of reservation,” an official viewed. The exception made in the amendment had its obvious reflection in the huge response from institutions for getting minority status.

The commission has received over 2,000 applications in the past four months as compared to 380 in the past whole year. The amendment helps schools with minority status to refuse any type of reservation in admission, including Delhi government’s 20 per cent for students from weaker section of the society.

It also provides some more relaxation to institutions with minority status. Commission officials, however, say that the amendment does not allow free hand to such schools in admissions.

Quoting Supreme Court judgements in the case of St Stephens College and in Inamdar case, officials say, the court had clearly stated that 50 per cent seats should be reserved for the community for which minority status is being sought.

So, a Christian missionary school should have 50 per cent seats for Christians and Sikh school for Sikh community.

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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