The Delhi High Court Wednesday refused to stay the decision of a single-judge bench quashing the Lt. Governor’s guidelines on nursery admissions in the capital’s unaided private schools.
A division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice R.S. Endlaw declined to pass an interim order on the applications of Delhi government and an NGO that sought suspension of the single-judge bench order, who scrapped the points system.
The bench said the order of single judge was based on certain findings, and it will hear the appeals of Delhi government and NGO Social Jurist in detail Jan 15, 2015.
It said that “prima facie it does not find the reasons given by the single judge to be perverse or totally unsustainable”. “However there are other far more weighty factors which guide us to refuse such interim stay,” said the bench.
The bench added: “Once a Judge of this court has after hearing arguments spanning over several months held so, we would not be justified, in the facts and circumstances of the case, to allow a state of affairs which has been found and declared to be illegal, to continue even for a day more, without finding a very strong prima facie case and which at this moment, we do not.”
Dismissing the applications of interim stay, it added: “We reiterate that the only effect of non-granting of the interim stay sought would be that instead of one child another child may be admitted to the nursery classes in some of the unaided recognized schools of Delhi. To us, at this stage, all children are equal and we do not find this to be a ground for us to grant any interim stay.”
The Lt. Governor issued the guidelines Dec 18, 2013, after which a number of petitions were filed against them.
The guidelines outlined several criteria, including the neighbourhood factor, which sought that schools give preference to children living within eight km of it.
On Nov 28, Justice Manmohan quashed the points system, saying the guidelines violated the fundamental rights of the school managements to have maximum autonomy in day-to-day administration, including the right to admit students.
The order allowed schools to set their own criteria according to the 2007 Ganguly Committee guidelines.
(IANS)