Plea seeking law to ban screening for nursery admissions dismissed

 The Supreme Court (SC) has dismissed a petition challenging a Delhi High Court order refusing to pass orders to expedite the finalisation of Delhi School Education (Amendment) Bill, 2015, which prescribes for prohibition of screening procedure for admission of children at pre-primary level in schools in the national Capital. “Can there be a mandamus to introduce a law? That is the problem and that is the view the High Court has taken. How can we say that the High Court is in error…Supreme Court can’t have a panacea for everything,” a Bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia said on Friday, dismissing the appeal filed by Social Jurist, an NGO.

Two and a half months after the Delhi High Court dismissed Social Jurist’s PIL seeking a direction to the Delhi Lieutenant Governor to either give his assent to or return a 2015 Bill that proposed a ban on screening children for nursery admissions – the NGO had moved the Supreme Court last month.

As the petitioner’s counsel said he only wanted to know the status of the Bill, the Bench gave the example of the Delhi Rent (Control) Act which was not implemented. “This is not an administrative action; this is on the legislative side,” it pointed out.

In its July 3 order, the HC had said it couldn’t interfere with the legislative process. “In the considered opinion of this court, even though the Bill has been passed by the House, it is always open to the governor to agree or to send the Bill back to the House and this court ought not to pass a writ of mandamus directing the governor to act,” the high court had said.

The petitioner NGO has contended in the top court that the child-friendly Bill “banning the screening procedure in nursery admission in schools has been hanging between the Central and the Delhi governments for the last seven years without any justification and against the public interest and opposed to public policy”.

The very objective and purpose of the 2015 Bill was to protect tiny children from exploitation and unjust discrimination in nursery admission in private schools, it submitted.

(Courtesy:- The Tribune, 15 October 2023)