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HC stays Kejri ban on school quota

-The Telegraph

New Delhi:
Delhi High Court today stayed a ban on management quotas in private schools clamped by the Arvind Kejriwal government, paving the way for admissions to resume in 2,500-odd institutions.

In its interim order, the court referred to an earlier judgment that such quotas could only be abolished by passing a law, not through an "office order" of the kind the AAP government had issued.

The court also upheld 11 criteria fixed by such schools - including preference to children on the basis of "status of the child" and the "achievements" of parents - but struck off by the government as discriminatory. Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said the government would appeal.

Most children are enrolled in the nursery stage and chief minister Kejriwal had called nursery admissions "the biggest scam".

Staying the ban today, Justice Manmohan cited the 2014 verdict of a division bench quashing a similar order issued by lieutenant-governor Najeeb Jung in 2013.

"At this prima facie stage, the (Kejriwal government's) deletion of management quota by way of an office order is impermissible in law," the judge said in his order and fixed the next hearing on April 12. Admissions would be over by then.

The AAP government had got an amendment bill passed in December 2015 to supersede a 2007 executive order that gave private schools full powers on admissions. The bill is yet to get Jung's assent.

Speaking after the January 6 cabinet decision banning the quotas, Kejriwal had said: "What is management quota? Under it, you get admission if someone is recommended by a chief minister, education minister, judge, police commissioner, (police) station house officers or an income-tax official. Either there are recommendations or seats are sold."

Today, the court said "malpractice in utilisation of management quotas, like sale of seats, should be investigated but it cannot be a ground to abolish the quota itself". "After all, vesting of discretion is not bad, but to misuse it is illegal."

School heads questioned the rationale behind the ban. "There can be a regulatory mechanism to check corruption, but without the management quota, people will not start schools.... Every school has its own ethos and parents may want to choose a certain kind of school for their children," Ameeta Mulla Wattal, the principal of Springdales School, told The Telegraph.