NEW DELHI: In an attempt to end “discrimination” during admission in private unaided schools, the Delhi government on Wednesday ordered such schools to scrap the management quota. It also struck down 62 debatable criteria, against which some schools had been awarding seats, for selecting the students.The order is likely to hit a legal hurdle and may end up delaying the ongoing nursery admission process.Claiming that certain schools were providing as much as 75% reservation under various categories, CM Arvind Kejriwal said only 25% quota for economically weaker sections (EWS), as mandated by the Right to Education Act, would now be permitted.While the move will benefit parents by opening up more seats, it is not clear whether the government has the legal authority to issue such directions to the private schools which had been granted autonomy by the Delhi high court in 2014.Going a step further, the state has threatened to derecognise the vschools or even take them over if they refuse to comply with its order. Anticipating that the matter will be taken to court, CM Arvind Kejriwal said he would make a personal appearance in court to defend the government’s intervention.Many schools alleged that the AAP government was “punishing” them for not providing buses during the odd-even trial, but it denied any such motive and said it was reacting to information made public by schools only recently.“The high court had asked the government not to micromanage nursery admissions and we had asked schools to draw up their own criteria and to make it public. When we saw the kind of criteria some of them had come up with, we could not allow admissions to take place on such discriminatory grounds. The cabinet had therefore agreed to issue directions to the schools to cancel some of them. This is an illustrative list and we are in the process of constituting a committee that will oversee the process,” said Kejriwal.LG Najeeb Jung had attempted to define criteria for nursery admission and abolish the management quota in 2013, a decision which was contested in court and which delayed nursery admissions the next year. A single Bench order of the high court then allowed schools autonomy to decide their own criteria against which the state government approached a division bench. The matter has since been sub-judice and the next date of hearing is on January 22.School managements will either challenge this order separately in court or report it on January 22 to the HC’s division bench. “What they’re attempting to do amounts to contempt of court. The single-bench judgment upheld the autonomy of private schools to decide nursery criteria as well as management quota,” said S K Bhattacharya, who heads the Action Committee for Unaided Recognized Public Schools, an umbrella organisation of the city’s private school associations.The criteria to which the government has raised objections include status of child, non-smoker parent, proficiency by applicant in music and sports, social and noble cause, vegetarianism, joint family etc.Parents largely welcomed the abolition of the management quota though some had reservations about the cancellation of categories. A parent on admissionsnursery.com said: “It is a great decision by the government if implemented successfully. It is, however, very late to control the monopoly of schools by introducing the Education Reform Bill at this point. At last someone has shown courage to take on schools.”