Delhi govt moves HC against 'totally wrong' nursery ruling

Disagreeing with a single judge's interim order staying new nursery admission norms based on the neighbourhood criteria, Delhi government today appealed before a Delhi High Court division bench.
Maintaining that the order passed by the single judge was "totally wrong", "erroneous" and "against the law", the Delhi government sought setting aside of the order.
The single judge had said that "a student's educational fate can't be relegated to only his/her position on a map".
Terming the criteria as "arbitrary and discriminatory", Justice Manmohan had said it benefitted only those parents who lived close to good private schools.
The government's appeal, which is likely to be taken up for hearing tomorrow, said "leaving it to schools to frame their own guidelines will only promote arbitrariness of private managements and lead to admissions in an opaque manner. This will help the school management to justify the exorbitant fees they charge".

The single judge had said the interim stay on the January 7 notification would remain in place till final disposal of the pleas challenging the Delhi government order to private unaided schools to accept nursery admission forms based only on the neighbourhood or distance criteria.

The order had come on petitions filed by parents and two school groups challenging the Delhi government's December 19, 2016 and January 7 notifications that made 298 private schools, built on Delhi Development Authority land, to accept nursery admission forms based only on the neighbourhood or distance norm.
The school groups had alleged that the Delhi government has "discriminated" among schools as neighbourhood criteria had been applied against only 298 schools and not been made mandatory for 1,400 other schools in the city.

The Delhi government and DoE had defended its decision by saying it was taken in the larger public interest.
But the court had disagreed with the contention and said "children are uniformly affected by alleged factors of public interest and it cannot be said that public interest is to be served only in the case of children going to 298 schools and not to the other 1400-odd schools".