Court issues notice on alumni, sibling points in nursery admission

The Delhi High Court Friday declined to give relief to parents seeking to quash the points allotted to alumni and siblings in the nursery admission process this year and issued notice to the city government on the plea.

Justice Manmohan sought a response from department of education of Delhi government by July 25.

The lt. governor in guidelines issued Dec 18, 2013 allotted five points to alumni while 20 points were allotted to siblings in the same school.

The plea filed by some parents said the alumni and sibling quota was creating "inequality" among the masses and was against the right to equality and education and against the policy of neighbourhood.

Earlier out of the total 100 points, 70 were given to the child who lives in the neighbourhood of the school, 20 points given if a sibling is studying there, five points if either parent is an alumni and five points in an inter-state transfer case.

However, the government Feb 28 scrapped the five points given in inter-state category.

On Thursday, the court has ordered a fresh draw of lots for all seats, including the confirmed ones and those vacated after scrapping of the inter-state transfer points, to put all the children on equal footing.

The fresh plea of parents contended that most schools in the city have more applications at 75 plus points given the extremely large number of siblings and alumni than the total number of general seats.

"This effectively means the children who do not have siblings or whose parents are not alumni, have no chance of getting into schools in their neighbourhood or even elsewhere this year, irrespective of the fact the child is a first child and brought up within the defined or limited distance of eight km (within the vicinity of the school)," the plea said.

"Children of parents not having studied in a particular school in the neighbourhood, for having been living in some other place when they were born and sent to school by their parents are left remediless and their possibility of gaining an admission into a school of their choice in their neighbourhood are reduced to negligible."

The parents have sought direction to all private schools in Delhi from implementing the Dec 18 last year notification of Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung in respect of open category students.

They said the new points system has led to formation of a "class system" where one is classified by the school within the parameters of a "privileged" alumni or a "disadvantageous" non-alumni.