Revision as of 06:06, 16 November 2015

Can school for bureaucrats’ children be public-funded?

The Times of India, Oct 30 2015

Abhinav Garg

Sanskriti School case: Nine years on, HC reserves order

Can the state divert free land and public money to an individual or a society to establish a school reserved for children of elite government servants? The fate of Delhi's reputed Sanskriti School will now be tested on this legal premise. The Delhi high court reserved its verdict on a case it started suo motu and converted into a PIL in 2006.

Surprisingly ,even though the issue was taken up suo motu, it took over nine years for the HC to reach the stage of wrapping up proceedings to pave the way for a verdict on the school, set up by wives of top bureaucrats.

A bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Mukta Gupta conducted a marathon hearing of two hours to conclude the matter on the very first day of its listing before them. The bench indicated the broad contours its impending verdict will deal with -legality of state funding for land and building construction of Sanskriti School and concession up to 40% in fee charged from children of group A officers. HC is also likely to decide if a quota of 60% seats for group A officers is valid or not.

The thrust of the court's inquiry has been to examine why the government is routing large public resources to a school not accessible to children belonging to the weaker sections of the society. Rejecting the arguments that the grant of Rs 10 crore is towards capital expenses, the court had on an earlier occasion asserted that government resources should be made available firstly to the weaker sections of society .

In the last effective hearing held two years ago, then Chief Justice NV Ramana had questioned why departments and ministries were vying with each other to fund the school. HC has already examined the school's management and pattern of admission and the verdict is expected to have a bearing on both.

On its part, the school has fielded a battery of lawyers including Union minister Arun Jaitley who had challenged the court's powers to examine a budgetary provision by Parliament. The institute has maintained that only 60% of seats are for the children of group A officers, while 10% for general public, 5% for staff and 25% for EWS category .

Nov 2015: HC ends quota for bureaucrats' children

The Times of India, Nov 07 2015

Abhinav Garg

HC ends quota for bureaucrats' kids in Sanskriti

It's like racial segregation in US of 1960s

The Delhi high court on Friday ended the nearly two-decade-old system of reservations for children of bureaucrats in the FULL COVERAGE: P 4 city's Sanskriti School, likening it to racial segregation of students in 1960s' US. A bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Mukta Gupta quashed the 60% quota for wards of Group-A central service officers and said it violated constitutional provisions of equality and Right to Education .

“Sanskriti has been promoted as a school primarily for children of Group-A offi cers... This is analogous to the scenarios in Brown and Keyes cases (involving segregation of white and black students in the US),“ the court observed. It directed the Centre to immediately implement the verdict or convert the school into a Kendriya Vidyalaya if it wanted to maintain it as a preserve for kids of government employees. The court noted that in India, “the circle of ci tizens has to be broadened and the children of whatever parentage be...educated to be one harmonious people“.

By reserving 60% of the seats, the school had created an “arbitrary separation“ between the children of Group-A officers and other students, the court said, stressing that “the State cannot provide funds to any private individual to establish a school for an elite segment of society .“

The bench rejected the justification of the government that the school aims to provide stable schooling to children of All India Service officers whose assignments “fluctuate“ between different geographic locations in India. It pointed out that this predicament was being faced by persons engaged in other branches of the Indian services. If children of group-A officers could not be accommodated in the Kendriya Vidyalayas due to shortage of seats, “another KV could have been established on the land given free of cost to the civil services society.“

Drawing on the two affidavits filed by the Centre during the nine-year-long hearings initiated suo motu by it, HC observed that the real reason for setting up the school was that the top services wanted “good schools“ and “elite schools“ for their wards.

The court said a 60% quota for bureaucrats “creates a limited notion of diversity and merely separates group-A Union government officers from an otherwise similar category of students“.

“Thus, a classification that includes merely children of group-A Union government officers bears no merit. In sum, the respondents' separate treatment of aforesaid classification of children violates both the spirit of equal protection under Article 14 of the Constitution and the spirit of equality of education under Article 21A,“ the bench said It also noted that the school charges 40% less fee from children of group-A officers of the Union government as compared to other children.The bench said the government had “failed to show“ that no alternative means were available by which it could have created “a balance between children of the aforesaid officers, children of persons in other branches of the Indian services, and children of the general category“.

Under the current system, the school reserves 60% of the seats for children of Group-A officers, 25% for economically weaker sections, 10% for general students and 5% for staff children.

The court resented the fact that the “privileged, who can afford to buy education, have access to high-quality schools while the poor and marginalised are left to wallow in ill-equipped schools set up by municipalities, gram panchayats and the government“.

School's funding

The Times of India, Nov 07 2015

School's funding under debate  The exclusiveness of Sanskriti School has frequently drawn attention to its operations and the institution's finances have often been a subject of debate, even figuring in discussions in the Lok Sabha, where the topic was raised in 2010, 2012, 2014 and in April this year. Not surprising, because the school has irked a lot of important people, among them politicians and education activists, by turning down the admission of their children. Even former Rajya Sabha member and political heavyweight Amar Singh had faced the ignominy of this twin daughters being denied admission. Because the school reserves 60% seats for kids of Class I civil servants--an official close to the school's management objects to the word “reservation“ used in this context--there is a lot of power play involved in the admission procedure. Unsuccessful applicants often retaliate by questioning the propriety of the school's funding and its operations.

According to the official reply to BJP's Jagdambika Pal Singh and YSR-Congress' Mekapati Rajmohan Reddy in the Lok Sabha in April, Sanskriti received Rs 25.20 crore as “grants-in-aid“ from government sources between 1995 and 2009.It received grants of Rs 5 crore from the defence ministry in 1995-96; the same amount from the HRD ministry in 1995-1997; Rs 1 crore from RBI in 1999-2000; Rs 20 lakh from the railway ministry in 1999-2001; Rs 14.9 lakh from ONGC; Rs 5 lakh from NTPC and amounts between Rs 1lakh and Rs 25 lakhs from state governments.

Riled by these unwarranted sources of financing, S K Bhattacharya of the Action Committee for Unaided Recognized Private Schools, Delhi, wondered whether funding had a bearing on the school's status. “Do all grants-in-aid make the school an aided school or not?“ he asked. “If it is an aided school, then all the rules of the Right to Education Act should apply to it.“

Sanskriti's principal could not be reached for a response, and Roopa Sinha, chairperson of the Civil Services Society which runs the school, told TOI she “can't comment without reading the order“. However, the school does have supporters who argue it should be allowed to function as it runs on the same principles as scho ols under the armed forces. Bhattarcharya countered this by pointing out, “Such schools generate funds from fees and may receive some aid from the welfare funds of their respective branch of the armed forces. They don't receive grant from regular government departments.“

Talking about armed forces academies, a source said the Air Force Schools were established primarily for children of Indian Air Force personnel and fall within unaided private institution category .However, unlike Sanskriti, these schools also admitted children of army and navy personnel and civilians. “ Apart from the tuition fee that's realized from students, the schools are funded by the Indian Air Force,“ the source said. The sister schools, Air Force Bal Bharati and Air Force Golden Jubilee Institute, are also run by the same society under the IAF . Similarly, the army , under the Indian Army Welfare Education Society , runs 130 schools that primarily cater to the education needs of Indian armed forces families.

A person acquainted with Sanskriti's functioning wryly observed, “The court won't take suo motu cognizance of the pollution in the capital or of rape cases, but it pulls up Sanskriti.“ He, however, added that “to be honest, the school's case does look weak“. He felt that the school should have generated funds independently , and said that it was the IAS that had acquired money and government land for the school, only to shoot itself in the foot.