Sisodia slams pvt schools for challenging new nursery

New Delhi: Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia today slammed private schools running on DDA land for moving court against the new guidelines on nursery admissions saying the government had formed the new rules in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling of 2004.

The Deputy Chief Minister also hit out at the previous government for not formulating the guidelines for nursery admissions within three months of the apex court ruling then.

“Ideally following Supreme Court’s ruling in 2004 the guidelines for nursery admissions in 298 schools running on DDA land should have been formulated within three months. But it did not happen for whatever reason,” Sisodia said in his blog.

“Now that our government has followed the court ruling and formulated the guidelines, these schools should follow them but they have decided to challenge a Supreme Court judgement before the High Court,” he added.

Delhi Government had last month directed 298 private schools running on DDA land to hold the admission process till new guidelines are announced.

After keeping the admissions process on hold for over a week, the Delhi government announced a fresh set of norms making the distance of the school from the applicant’s residence a major criterion while considering them for admission.

Two groups representing private unaided schools decided to move court challenging a condition in the letter allotting DDA land to them under which admissions have been restricted to the institutions’ locality.

While the Court pulled up the AAP dispensation for coming out with nursery admission norms at the “eleventh hour” leading to “chaos, confusion and wastage of valuable judicial time”, it directed the parents to fill up the application forms of various schools based on the criteria set by them as well as the government.