SC guidelines are given the go-by

But exactly five months later, on April 18, four-year-old Ashna Gulati was crushed under a school bus.

A senior police official says preliminary investigations reveal the driver, Yag Dutt, was negligent. Though all the children had got off, he did not ensure whether any of them were still near the bus.

Neither did he have the mandatory 10-year experience 8212; one of the Supreme Court stipulations 8212; to drive school buses. The court had directed all schools to hire DTC buses. Neither Ludlow Castle nor Leelawati Vidya Mandir, post Wazirabad, did so.

Asha Gulati8217;s school had hired the services of a Paharganj-based transport agency Surinder Travels. At least 13 buses from the agency were pressed into service each morning. But none of these buses were painted yellow, and neither was school bus8217; painted prominently across the body. The drivers were always in a hurry after dropping the children near the school, as they also ferried office-goers.

A consequence of this was that the buses always dropped the children on the opposite side of the road near the school, though there was enough space in front of the school gate to park a bus.

Ashna was dragged under the front wheel of her school bus when she went around the vehicle to cross the road. Her father, Sunil Gulati, and parents of other children claim that they had written to the school several times about the parking problem as well as the hurry to drop the children. Says Gulati: 8220;We never received any reply from the school. But they never forgot to remind us of the bus fees.8221; The parents do not have much faith in the inquiry. They say: 8220;There8217;ll be another report. Nothing will change. The apex court guidelines are sufficient. All the government needs to do is implement them.8221;