Inter-state nursery seats: SC favours only those parents who moved court

A bench led by Justice H L Dattu said all such parents and guardians who have come to the SC or have their cases pending before the Delhi High Court will get relief for their children.

But, “fence-sitter” parents will not have any say in the matter since they chose not to come to the court and waited for the outcome of petitions by others, the bench clarified, while refusing to pass any “general order”.

The court took on record the submission by government counsel Raju Ramachandran that it was not possible to increase the number of seats by 5-7 for the IST category.

Responding to the court’s query, Ramachandran said the inability to increase seats had emerged following deliberations with the Lt-Governor and the schools.

At this, the bench questioned the government’s justification to come up with a new notification even after the admission process had been completed on the basis of its previous notification.

“Your previous notification, saying reject those cases where there was slightest of doubt, was correct. But when you say that most of the cases could be doubtful, so throw out all of them, we think that is … impossible. We cannot allow that,” the bench said.

The bench was of the view that children should get admissions “as a matter of their right”, and this could not be curtailed by availability of seats.

The bench then asked senior advocate Nidhesh Gupta, who appeared for a bunch of parents, to produce a list of those who have moved the courts and fixed the case for Monday to pass appropriate orders.

The admission had been stalled by the SC on April 11 after some parents challenged the February 27 notification, scrapping the IST quota. They moved the apex court after the HC allowed admissions without considering the IST cases.