Nursery row drags on;HC to hear plea to scrap alumni, sibling

The Delhi High Court, which recently stayed the draw of lots for nursery admissions, today agreed to hear a fresh appeal seeking scrapping of five and 20 points being awarded to kids falling under alumni and sibling categories respectively.
"Renotify the petition for hearing with the pending petition on March 24," a bench comprising Acting Chief Justice B D Ahmed and Justice Siddharth Mridul said.
The High Court, which has already decided some pleas, has been hearing several petitions of aggrieved parents against the Lt Governor's nursery admission guidelines 2013-14.
"You are also expanding the thing," the bench said when senior advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the parents, started advancing arguments in support of the plea seeking scrapping of points being awarded to kids under alumni and sibling categories.

As per the guidelines, out of 100, 70 points are given kids who reside within 0 to 8 kms of a school. Twenty points to a child whose sibling is studying in the same school and 5 points are earmarked for the kids whose parents were alumni.
Delhi government has recently done away with five points which were being awarded to kids under inter-state transfer category.

The fresh appeal, filed by parents including Sudhanshu Jain, has sought a direction to "restrain respondents and all unaided private schools from acting upon and implementing the Notification dated 18 December 13..., in respect of open category students and set aside the same being violative of the rights of the Appellants as stated in the present Appeal."

"That most schools in the city..., all have maximum applications at 75+ points, given the extremely large number of siblings and alumni's than the total number of general seats.
"This effectively means that the children who do not have a sibling, or whose parents are not alumni, have outrightly no chance of getting into schools in the neighbourhood or even elsewhere this year...," the plea, filed through advocates Prashant Mehta and Himanshu Kapoor, said.