Quota for officers' kids: HC seeks reply from Centre, school

The Delhi High Court today granted a week's time to the Centre, city government and Sanskriti school to file their counter affidavits on a plea challenging an order of the Lt Governor that allowed the institution to reserve seats for children of bureaucrats.
A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana also placed the matter before the single judge who is already hearing other similar petitions challenging the LG's order and directed that the single judge decides the matter in ten days after the filing of the counter by the government.
The court was hearing an appeal against the single judge order refusing to grant any immediate relief to Dheeraj Kumar Singh, the lawyer-father of a three-year-old girl, who contended that the LG Recognized Schools (Admission Procedure for Pre-primary Class) Order 2013 "permits specific government services and more particularly All India Services an unfettered and unrestricted right to reserve seats for their wards".

The bench passed the order after the petitioner's counsel Akhil Sachar submitted that the matter needs to be decided expeditiously as the first cut-off list for nursery admission will be issued on February 28.
Following the submission, the bench advanced the date of hearing of all such petitions before the single judge from April 21 to February 17 and said the matter may be heard expeditiously.
During the brief hearing, the counsel for the Delhi government said the government can make such quota as it does so in government schools.
To this, the bench said, "It (Sanskriti school) is a society. You cannot equate it with a school run by the government. The governmemnt has not created it."

The government said the matter may be heard along with other similar petitions pending before the single judge.