The Hindu : New Delhi News : Court directs minority schools to follow admission guidelines

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Tuesday, Dec 04, 2007
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Court directs minority schools to follow admission guidelines

Staff Reporter

Allows unaided public schools to frame own criteria; rules out interviews

This follows petition against denial of admission for not fulfilling independent criteria of school
Earlier, Court had set a committee under Ashok Ganguly to suggest an alternative for interviews

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday directed schools run by minority communities here to follow the Delhi Government’s guidelines for admission to pre-primary classes.

The High Court had approved the guidelines last month. The guidelines, among other things, provide for autonomy to unaided public schools of the Capital to frame their own criteria and rule out interviewing of the kids or their parents for admissions to these classes.

A Division Bench of the Court comprising Justice M.K. Sharma and Justice Sanjiv Khanna passed the direction in a judgment on an appeal by advocate Ashok Aggarwal of non-government organisation Social Jurist against a single-judge Bench judgment of the Court holding that minorities’ school here were free to frame their formulae for admissions to these classes.

The single-judge Bench had passed the judgment on a petition by the father of a girl child who was denied admission to nursery class by Montfort Senior Secondary School at Ashok Vihar because she did not fulfil the independent criteria evolved by the school management.

Justice B.D. Ahmed of the Court had held that in so far as the schools run by minority communities were concerned, their rights had been clearly safeguarded not only with regard to admitting children of the minority communities but of children in general.

The Court allowed Mr. Aggarwal’s submission that the State could interfere in the affairs of these schools if it found that they were suffering from maladministration.

Mr. Aggarwal’s further submission was that the profit motive had also afflicted these schools.

Therefore, the State had the moral duty to regulate them in public interest, he submitted.

Counsel for the school management, Romy Chaco, submitted that his client be kept independent of the obligation of having to get their admission criteria approved by the Delhi Government, but the Court rejected it.

The Government had framed the guidelines on a direction by the High Court. Earlier, the High Court had set a committee under the Central Board of Secondary Education chairman Ashok Ganguly to suggest an alternative formula to subjecting the wards and their parents to interviews for admissions to the two standards.

The committee had suggested a “points system” by assigning points to different requirements sought from the admission seekers.

However, the Government opposed the “points system” and formulated its own guidelines which the Court later approved.

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