Gujarat High Court

Malayalam

The fate of thousands of underprivileged students hangs in balance as the State education department and 300 schools are at loggerheads over granting them admission under the Right To Education Act. The schools want exemption claiming to be minority institutions, while the government says they do not enjoy that status. The matter has now reached the high court.As per the State government, only 13 schools enjoy minority status, but as many as 300 schools have approached theseeking exemption from granting admission under RTE. Another 100 schools are likely to approach the HC on the same issue.Consequently, the fate of 45,000 students is in limbo as the government has failed to conduct the second round of admissions due to the ongoing litigations.Most of the schools in question are run by Christian or Muslim religious trusts, besides few minority language schools includingor Sindhi medium ones.As per sources, the schools did not admit students under RTE earlier, but after the government started imposing Rs 1lakh penalty on such schools, they have knocked the HC’s door.The core reason for getting minority status is that they do not have to reserve 25 per cent of the total seats for poor children under the RTE. As per a Supreme Court judgment, the schools with minority status based on religion or language have been exempted from the ambit of the act.Other private school managements too have filed petitions in the HC over admitting the poor students under RTE, while activists have dragged the government to court for failing to start the second round of admissions under RTE and also not taking action against schools denying admission on one or other grounds.Gujarat Education Board of Catholic Institutions (GEBCI), an umbrella body of 174 schools, and other schools filed petitions after the government started imposing fine of Rs 1lakh on schools denying admission to students under RTE citing the minority tag. The count of schools who have filed petitions citing minority institution has now touched 300. They have secured stay on the government action of imposing fine.“Gujarat HC has issued an interim order to the government to not take any coercive action against those schools to which notice has been served imposing fine by the respective DEOs,” said Mamta Vyas, counsel for GEBCI. “The court has to still adjudicate the matter. Further hearing is on Monday,” she said.Bone of contentionThey have contended that they run the primary and higher secondary schools but only have the minority status certificate for the higher secondary schools as the boards of primary and secondary are separate.“There are 300 odd schools contesting the case on the ground of minority status,” said Sudhir Nanavati, senior counsel for the schools.The institutions are being penalised on the technical issue though they have minority status. Explaining this, Nanavati said, “The state government had formed a committee of District Education Officers (DEOs) in 2011-2012. Assuming the primary schools are by default exempted from the RTE, the institutions got the minority status certificate for their higher secondary classes (8 to 12), not for primary.”The counsel added, “Now the education department has started penalising them for not admitting students under RTE. In the past, the Supreme Court itself has exempted minority institutions. This is not legal but a technical issue. If government recognises them as minority in higher secondary, why not in the primary?”Government says they are bound to admit the students as they are not minority institutions. “We have submitted in the HC that the schools do not have the minority institution certificate and so are bound to provide admission under RTE,” said Dr Venugopal Patel, assistant government pleader (AGP).RTE activists say we want to know whether the government is right or the institutes. “The government has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court related to a RTE case filed by me and there it has submitted that there are only 13 minority schools in the state.So we want to know who is right and who is not? Because of this issue second round of RTE admission couldn’t take place and about 45,000 children are awaiting admission while the academic year has already commenced,” said Sandip Munjyasara, RTE activist.Calls made to Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama went unanswered.