KVs ignore rules to please HRD

Kendriya Vidyalayas are admitting children recommended by the HRD than of Central Govt employees.

Updated on: Feb 27, 2006, 16:48:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The priorities of Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV) seem to changing fast. These schools are admitting fewer wards of Central government employees who should ideally be taken in as a priority.

KVs are accommodating more students recommended by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD). Their numbers are steadily rising 1.37 per cent in 2001-02 to 23.97 in 2004-05. Meanwhile, the percentage of wards of government servants has dipped from 56 per cent in 2001-02 to 43 per cent in 2004-05.

The Public Accounts Committee, has not taken very kindly to the winds change. In its report tabled in Parliament on Friday, the committee headed by BJP spokesperson Vijay Kumar Malhotra, said, “The trend of admissions indicate that extraneous considerations seem to have weighed with the authorities concerned while admitting students to KV.

The committee will like to be apprised about the precise reasons for not adhering to the priority schedule.” As per norms, children of transferable Central government employees are to be given first priority, and children of non-transferable Central government employees come second.

There is a reduction in admissions under both these categories, and the HRD Ministry has jumped well above its quota of 100 seats. Officials, however, explain that many good students are opting for Kendriya Vidalayas as against well-known public schools.

“Kendriya Vidalayas are consistently doing better than public schools like DPS for the past few years and this has marketed KV so well that the students are coming in huge numbers from non-government sector," an official said. The PAC report says that in 2005, the result of KV for Class XII was about 93 per cent as compared to 81 per cent for Delhi Public School. KV has managed good results despite poor facilities for students, the report says.

SMART BOX
Winds of change?
• Kendriya Vidyalayas are increasingly admitting more students recommended
by the Ministry of HRD
• Such cases have risen from 1.37 pc in 2001-02 to 23.97 in 2004-05.
• The number of deserving students has dipped from 56 pc to 43 pc in same
period

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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