SC to end nursery mess today

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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday gave 24 hours to the lieutenant governor of Delhi to consider accommodating inter-state transfer students in nursery classes of private schools by allowing them to increase intake by five-six seats each. 

Blaming the government for changing the rules midway through admissions, a bench of Justices H L Dattu, M Y Eqbal and S A Bobde said it had entertained the petition by parents and stayed nursery admissions because of this sudden change of rules. 

When Delhi administration counsel Raju Ramachandran proposed that the court pass appropriate orders, the bench said if the LG did not find a way out by Tuesday, it would pass orders, indicating that admission blues of parents would soon be over. 

Accepting senior advocate Nidhesh Gupta's submission against the administration's February 27 order scrapping the inter-state transfer category, the bench said, "You cannot change the rules midstream. They have come on transfer from different places. What should happen to these students? Had they known this earlier, they would have left their wards back at earlier place." 

Conscious of the inconvenience caused by its stay on nursery admissions, the bench said, "We know by our interim order people would be affected. But by the order (scrapping inter-state transfer), the clock was being turned against them (petitioners)." 

In the 100-point nursery admission guidelines, inter-state transfer category students were given 5 additional points to enable them to compete with local students and vie for 30,000 seats. Post-February 27, they were rendered without any seat and were asked to compete again with 2.5 lakh students for 2,000 vacant seats. 

Ramachandran informed the court that the policy was reviewed and inter-state transfer category struck off as it was found that of the 1,500-odd applications under this category, more than 800 were fake. 

But the bench asked, "How can you do it? Your earlier notification (of December 18, 2013) was accepted by us. You could have advised them to take permission of the court before changing the rules after the game had begun." Gupta argued that the government was free to act against "fake" applicants but it could not deprive genuine applicants who had secured admission. He said nursery seats were limited compared to primary classes. As an interim measure for this year, he proposed that if schools could be asked to increase intake by five seats, the inter-state transfer students who had secured admission could be adjusted. 

The court told Ramachandran, "This is a matter where you (Delhi administration) should take a decision and see all of them get a place. For this year, as a one-time measure, allow schools to have five-six seats extra in pre-primary. By doing so, you will be solving the problem of these 70-pointers instead of you going up and down and making parents spend so much money on such silly matters."