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L-G notifies order on free-ship for poor students

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: The Lieutenant-Governor has notified the Delhi Government's order of October 2006 making it a statutory obligation for all private schools that were granted land for school buildings at below market rates to provide free education to 20 per cent students belonging to economically weaker sections of society.

Informing the Delhi High Court about it this past Thursday, counsel for the Delhi Government submitted that students from nursery to Class XII would benefit from it.

Besides providing free education, the schools will also provide uniform and books to these students free of charge, the notification said, clarifying that they would not levy any charges on these students.

Further, the schools at the beginning of each academic session would publicise the free-ship scheme by putting notices on their notice boards and also inform the Delhi Government about it which would put it on its website, the notification said.

In case of any school not implementing the scheme, parents of the wards could complaint against it to the Deputy Director of the Directorate of Education of the area concerned.

However, the Delhi Government has kept aside from the scheme schools that have not been allotted government land.

However, students who have been availing themselves of the facility in these schools will continue to enjoy it, the notification clarified.

The matter reached the High Court when a social activist through public interest litigation had informed it last year that about 60 students taking education under the free-ship scheme had been expelled from different schools.

These schools had agreed to provide free-ship to 20 per cent of their total enrolment as one of the conditions at the time of allotment of land to them by the Delhi Development Authority.

In a reply to queries on the PIL, the Delhi Government had in October last year informed the Court that it had taken a decision on it and would notify it in a couple of months.

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