Nursery admissions to wait till Monday in Delhi

Nursery admissions in Delhi will have to wait till Monday as the Supreme Court has sought the list of parents who had till Thursday (May 1, 2014) moved the apex court and the high court for seeking admission under the transfer category.

An apex court bench of Justice H.L. Dattu, Justice M.Y. Eqbal and Justice S.A. Bobde Friday said any relief to students under the transfer category would be available only to those who have knocked on the doors of the high court and the apex court till Thursday (May 1, 2014).

The Delhi government, while responding in the negative to the court's query on whether it could increase five to six seats in each school to accommodate the applicants under the transfer category, said it can earmark some seats under this category for children and admissions would be subject to verification of their transfer claim.

At the outset of the hearing, the court asked senior counsel Raju Ramachandran, appearing for the Delhi government, to address the question as to whether one can "change the rules of the game" after the government had Dec 18, 2013 notified an admission policy and admissions had been started according to conditions stipulated in it.

Seeking a response from the government as to how it could change the admission rules mid-way, Justice Dattu said: "You begin the game. This is the qualification, condition and requirement, etc. for the person interested to play and people having qualification apply. After game started, you put yet another condition."

Once again reiterating the query, Justice Dattu said: "You started the game. The game is half the way through, is it possible to change the rules."

Ramachandran told the court that when the admission process started, "we found a number of applications under transfer category from Noida to Delhi, Gurgaon to Delhi and from other nearby places. Therefore, we deleted the category."

"Merely because you had some doubtful cases, you excluded the transfer category from the criteria of the Dec 18, 2013 notification," the court asked.

"Let them have it (admission) as a matter of right, not as a charity," Justice Dattu said as Ramachandran urged the court to let the admission take place and whatever seats are left, the transfer cases would be accommodated against them.

Modifying his position, Ramachandran said a certain number of seats could be earmarked /reserved for toddlers coming under the transfer category and will be available to them subject to the verification of transfer application.

As the court gave its nod to the proposal by Ramachandran, saying: "agreed, agreed", it further said that the order would be applicable to those who have approached the court.

As senior counsel Nidhesh Gupta, appearing for transfer case parents, urged the court to give time to the parents under transfer category to file their applications by Monday, the court said it can't pass a "general and omnibus" order.

"You can't be a fence sitter and wait what medicine was being prescribed and seek to avail it." Justice Dattu said "relief will be confined to only those who have approached the court till yesterday (Thursday)".

The Supreme Court had April 11 put on hold the April 3 Delhi High Court nod to the schools to go ahead with the admission process except inter-state transfer admission cases.

The high court, while permitting admission under all the categories, had said that the nursery admissions under inter-state category would wait as it would hear their matter.

The entire admission process under the inter-state category came under a cloud as it was suspected that fake admissions were being pushed through under the garb of inter-state transfer cases.

This was the outcome of a survey which pointed to fake attempts under the inter-state category and second, the kids under the neighbourhood category were losing to inter-state category as the latter had more points.

However, now it has surfaced that 7,238 applications were genuine and 2,209 were not genuine transfer cases under the inter-state category.