Annoyed with the education department for not issuing a circular to schools here to reserve three seats in the current round of nursery admissions for differently-abled children, the Delhi High Court Tuesday summoned the principal secretary education.
A division bench of Justice S. Ravindra Bhat and Justice Vibhu Bhakhru issued notice to Anindo Majumdar, principal secretary (education) of Directorate of Education and asked him to appear before it on May 16.
The court's order came while hearing a contempt plea filed against Majumdar for initiation of contempt proceedings for non-compliance of court's May 7 order which had asked Delhi government to issue circular "within 24 hours" to schools, which are yet to be inspected for special facilities, to reserve at least three seats in nursery classes for such children.
Earlier, petitioner Pramod Arora, through senior advocate Keerti Uppal and advocate Anshumaan Sahni, submitted a list of 43 schools which could support special children. Arora also submitted a list of seven more schools, which admitted special students in nursery in the past two years.
The court May 7 directed government to issue circular to 15 schools -- eight schools which were yet to be inspected by the Delhi government from the list of 43 schools submitted by Arora and seven schools pointed out by him as having the facility to cater to the needs of disabled children apart from those 43 schools.
In an action taken report, submitted by Delhi government, it had stated that inspections of 36 of the 43 schools in the city had shown that only 18 schools were capable of educating children with special needs. Of the 43 schools, eight have not been inspected yet.
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Asking government to reserve three percent seats for disabled students, the court observed the whole exercise to admit children with special needs in mainstream schools and the judgment of the court would be in futility if the reservation was not implemented.
In March, the court directed the Directorate of Education to issue a notification to 43 private schools with facilities to educate special students to reserve three seats in this season's admissions.