Nursery Admission will now Commence from 17 January in Delhi

The process of Nursery Admission which was to begin from 15 January will now be late by 2 days since Delhi government told to wait for the judgment to come from the new hearing in High Court going to take place on 15-16 January, as the 13 January verdict on 18th December’s nursery guidelines remained inconclusive.

The nursery admission procedure for this year would commence from 17 January 2014.

The plea to be heard in high court is submitted by unaided private schools to appeal to make adjustments in the nursery admission criteria which were issued by LT. Governor Najeeb Jung to be implemented by all nursery schools in Delhi.

A proper bench is setup to hear the plea in detail and accordingly some amendments in norms are likely to be brought.

To bring up new norms the court need detailed hearing and in such short time no new rule can be brought up, said the court.

Mere deferring of the hearing without any order is taking place, said a division bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Jayant Nath while hearing the appeal of Action Committee for Unaided Recognized Private Schools against a judge order who refused to stay the notification having new criteria for nursery admissions in Delhi.

High court now declined stay of the notification in order to hear plea on 15-16 January.

The action committee of unaided private schools who filed the plea challenged Jung’s directives announced on 18 December proclaiming as “absolutely illegal, arbitrary and without jurisdiction.” Their plea alleges that 18 December’s norms violates the principle of autonomy and added that central government allows private unaided schools to frame their own for filling up 75% seats.

"The notification was issued in absolute contravention and in violation of the guidelines issued by the ministry of human resource department on 23 November 2010 whereby complete and maximum autonomy was granted to private unaided registered schools to frame their own policy for admission and lay down their own criteria," the plea said.

If no new norms are ordered by high court until 17 January, then for this year the admission criteria for nursery admission has to be followed by all nursery schools which states that admission need to made on the basis of 100 point system. The “neighborhood” criterion for kids living within 8 kms radius of the school, will fetch them the most points i.e. 70, in child’s favor and will be preferred among others for granting admission seat.

In addition, the Jung’s notification also grants 5 percent quota to grandchildren of staff members of the school which was earlier extended only to children.
Also, 25% seats need to be reserved for the economically weaker section and disadvantaged group and 20 points for those children whose sibling is already studying in the same school. While, 5 points extra IS to be awarded to the girl candidate.

Under any norms, the admission process for nursery classes has to be commenced from 17 January 2014, with last date for submission of applications being 31st January 2014.