Turn veg to school your child

New Delhi, Dec 28: Delhi’s Jain schools may probably achieve what Anbumani Ramadoss and Baba Ramdev have been trying for long. Most of the 58 schools run by the community, in the capital, will give additional points for admission to children of teetotalers and vegetarians. Parents will have to sign declarations to that effect.

Private schools in Delhi follow a point based system by which applicants are given points based on proximity to the school, siblings in the school, alumni parents, famous parents and so on. The top scorers get into nursery.

While minority institutions have the right to prefer students of their community, discrimination based on food habits of parents is illegal says Ashok Agarwal of NGO Social Jurist. It is casteist move.

“Discrimination during admission violates the Right to Education (RTE) Act and the constitution,” says advocate Agarwal who has filed a PIL in the Delhi High Court against the nursery admission guidelines of the state government. The guidelines, he says, gave a free hand to private schools to select whom they wanted.

Agarwal favours the system adopted by government schools. Weightage is only given to proximity of the child’s home to the school. After that selection is by lottery.

But managements of private schools have deemed the lottery impractical. Some parents too favour preference in admission to a school whose value system they subscribe too. The government wants a mix of points and lottery.

“The RTE says states should formulate criteria for admission. We are following the point based system as laid down by the Ashok Ganguly committee, which the High Court prescribed,” says R. C. Jain, President of the Delhi State Public Schools Management Association.

Jain, a former secretary of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee, adds that giving extra points to kids of vegetarians and teetotalers is a right of minority institutions. This right extends not just to the general category (75 %) but even the economically weaker category (25%). Reservation for poor children is imperative under the RTE.

Agarwal differs saying that while reserving seats for minorities is legal, policing food habits of people is not. “They’re not just saying seats for Jains. They’re also defining what kind of Jains.” Besides, the Ganguly committee called for a uniform selection procedure across the board, not unique criteria for every school, he adds.

At the time of filing this report Delhi’s education ministry was still undecided as to who could talk to the press- Minister A. S. Lovely or Director P. Krishnamurthy. However, the ministry will have to answer the court on Agarwal’s PIL by January 31.

But admissions begin on January 1 and it seems the revivalists will have their way.