The Delhi High Court today stayed the AAP government's new nursery admission norm based on neighbourhood criteria, saying "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 said it benefits only those parents who live close to good private schools.
There was a "potential of abuse" of the condition as many rich parents would either shift to areas close to the school they want their children to study in or would get "sham" rent receipts or documents from owners or relatives and friends to show they reside in such areas when they do not, he said.
The court noted that no mechanism to curb or examine the possibility of abuse was provided in the Directorate of Education's (DoE) January 7, 2017 notification by which it had enforced a clause in the DDA allotment letter which made it mandatory for 298 private unaided schools here to admit students from their neighbourhood.
It said that under the Constitution and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, parents have a right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children, but this notification makes such a right "an empty formality" as neighbourhood is virtually the sole admission criteria.
"State cannot impose restriction on choice just because it thinks it will be more beneficial for the child," it said and added that the effect of the notification appears to be to reserve seats for a certain section of children who stay in the immediate neighbourhood without taking into account their socio-economic or cultural status.
"Under the impugned notification, the affluent persons living close to good schools stand to benefit... Reservation for a section of the society that is neither socially nor economically or educationally backward or Scheduled Castes / Scheduled Tribes/Minorities is prima facie unconstitutional," the court said.
It said the primary cause of the nursery admission chaos is the "lack of adequate number of good quality public schools and uneven distribution of good private unaided schools" in Delhi, and this coupled with the high population density of the city, results in seats being "exhausted" on the immediate distance criteria of zero to three kilometer where private schools on DDA land are concerned.
Till the quality of all public schools improves, the disparity between demand and supply will remain and "a lot more needs to be done before the public schools come at par with good private unaided schools in public perception", it said.