In a setback to unaided private schools, the Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed their plea seeking a stay on city Government’s nursery admission guidelines that included scrapping of 20 per cent management quota.
“We feel that the appellants (Action Committee Unaided Recognised Private Schools and Forum for promotion of quality education for all) have not shown any immediate injury due to the guidelines,” a bench comprising Chief Justice NV Ramana and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said.
Soon after the judgement, DoE notified a new admission schedule that will commence from Tuesday (January 21). The last date of submission of forms will be February 5. The Government had earlier told the court that the admission will begin only after the order.
“There was no delay in passing of the judgement,” the bench remarked. The court also made it clear that its observations have no bearing on the final outcome of the petition pending before a single judge bench.
“So far as the larger issue of autonomy and the applicability of the Government’s guidelines on the unaided private schools are concerned, they will be decided by the single judge bench without being influenced by our observations in this judgement,” it said.
The bench said the private schools could not satisfy it as to how the non-grant of stay will affect their rights in the backdrop of the fact that either one or another child will get the admission.
The private school bodies had moved the larger bench of the HC against the order of its single judge who had refused to grant them interim relief or stay the notification. The plea was filed challenging the nursery admission guidelines issued by the lieutenant-Governor (l-G), which abolished the 20 per cent management quota, on the ground that the l-G office has no jurisdiction to frame such guidelines. It had claimed the guidelines were against the principle of autonomy and the recognised unaided private schools were given the power by the Central Government to formulate their own admission criteria for 75 per cent seats.
lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung had on 18 December, 2013, issued new guidelines for nursery admissions for the session 2014-15 and took various steps such as scrapping of 20 per cent management quota. The admission process for nursery classes was to start from January 15 and the last date for submitting applications was set to be January 31.
The neighbourhood criteria, which seeks schools to give preference to children living within a radius of 6 kilometres from school, has been given maximum weightage with 70 points out of 100 in open category seats. later, the l-G enhanced the criteria to eight kilometres. Besides these, the applicants who have siblings studying in the same school will get 20 points and five points will be added by default in the application of girls and wards of school alumni.