Over 9,000 students from 8 NE Delhi schools likely to be shifted to new building next year

In an affidavit on Friday (February 16), the Delhi government’s Directorate of Education (DoE) told the High Court that out of the 14 schools that are the subject matter of the PIL, a total of 9,071 students from eight schools will be shifted to a newly constructed school building at Sri Ram Colony in Khajuri Khas. This new building will have 112 rooms, including 60 classrooms, and will function in two shifts — the morning shift for 5,206 girls, and evening for 3,865 boys.

Schools from which the students will be shifted are those at Sonia Vihar and Sabhapur, and two other schools at Khajuri Khas — all running in two shifts currently, with the morning shift as a girls’ school and the evening one as a boys’ school. The girls’ school at Sabhapur has a student-classroom ratio of 123, while the one at Sonia Vihar has a ratio of 104 students a classroom, the DoE had told the High Court in 2023.

The management committees of these schools have conducted meetings on the same and gave their consent, saying that the students are likely to be shifted in the new academic session of 2024-25 since the current session is nearly complete and students are preparing for examinations, going by the affidavit.

In a December 2023 order, the High Court had referred to the matter as an “alarming situation as young children are deprived of proper education due to the lack of proper infrastructure and facilities”, and asked the government to file a detailed affidavit specifying the number of children studying in the Northeast district schools, while outlining how the government intends to adjust the students in these schools to other schools “wherein they can be imparted full-time formal education like in other Delhi government-run schools”.

In its recent affidavit, the DoE said that 48 schools in 24 buildings operate in the Northeast-I district, with 1,32,607 students. “It is important to mention that District NE-I has the highest population density in Delhi… Due to overpopulation, the existing number of school buildings are not sufficient to accommodate the current strength of students. Further, the Covid-19 pandemic added woes to the situation as a large number of students from public schools have taken admission in government schools, due to financial problems. Moreover, this district is adjacent to the Uttar Pradesh border, hence, wards of the migratory population take admission in large numbers in government schools of district Northeast-I,” read the affidavit.

In six, including the double-shift schools at Tukhmirpur and Karawal Nagar, out of the 14 schools mentioned in the PIL, proposals for the construction of porta cabins have been sent to the Public Works Department (PWD) to provide more space. While this has been proposed as a temporary measure, a permanent solution is to “demolish the existing school buildings and construct new multi-storied school buildings,” said the DoE in its affidavit. However, some of the existing school buildings are “under-age as per PWD norms”, and they are not to be demolished, it added.

The matter is scheduled for next hearing on Monday.