Provide free education to all, rules SC

Last Updated: Thursday, April 12, 2012, 11:18

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Tags: Supreme Court, Right To Education, SH Kapadia

Zeenews Bureau

New Delhi: In a major development, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the constitutional validity of the Right to Education Bill making it mandatory for private schools to reserve 25% seats for children of economically weaker sections of society.

The RTE judgement will come into effect from Thursday and the court said prior admissions would not be affected.

A bench comprising Chief Justice SH Kapadia and Justices KS Radhakrishnan and Swantanter Kumar, which had reserved its verdict on August 3 last year, upheld provisions of the law which made right to education a fundamental right of children in the age group of 6-14 years.

The RTE Act will be applicable for day schools and not for boarding schools. The RTE Act will also not be applicable in private minority schools.

Reacting to the judgement, RTE campaigner and lawyer Ashok Aggarwal said, "I am happy with the judgement. I am hoping that overall it will be a boost to the child centric policy of the government."

The order was passed on a bunch of petitions by private unaided institutions which contended that the Act violates the rights of private educational institutions under Article 19(1)(g) which provided autonomy to private managements to run their institutions without governmental interference.

During the marathon arguments in the case which went for many months, the Centre had defended the law saying it was aimed at uplifting the socially and economically weaker section of society.

The Centre had emphasised the need to de-link merit and talent from social and economic differences among different sections of society and said that the act calls for "moving towards composite classrooms with children from diverse backgrounds, rather than homogeneous and exclusivist schools".

The main petitioner Society for Un-aided Private Schools, Rajasthan, and a host of associations representing various private schools questioned the validity of the Act on the ground that it impinged on their rights to run the educational institutions.

With PTI Inputs

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First Published: Thursday, April 12, 2012, 08:37

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Madhu Babu - Tirupathi
Can anybody let us know that Supreme court has made reservation of 3% for special needs children in private schools.

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Swapnanil Gogoi - Guwahati
Undoubtly, Supreme Court has taken a necessary step for the certain group of people of society who are unable to send their children’s to schools due to their poor financial conditions and as well as it will help to develop India’s education percentage, however imposing the same law to the private schools is less considerable. Whereas the private schools are running totally out of government funds and certainly it’s gonna impact on their economic condition, because of which they might not be able to offer the same standard of education. At the same time there is high chance of developing an atmosphere of discrimination among the poor and richer class of students, teachers might not give the equal attention to those who comes through reservations if SC decision impact on their remuneration. So in my opinion SC has to reconsider their verdict in order to provide a healthy and equal education to every class of people in India.

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Samuel T. Koshy - Sawai Madhopur
Crores of rupees spend by State Government for schools where students are countable students below 20 -50 are reading in Goverment schools.No step to improve the standard there while well run private schools to suffer the effect what will create soon in society and anarchy in education will automatically generated due to this rules.

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avani - India
While I agree with SC that every poor child should get free education, I do not understand why the burden is put on private schools? What for Indian people are paying taxes to teh Govt. While asking pvt schools to reserve free seats, Govt should have been asked to compensate Pvt schools for that. OK. then allow pvt schools to go for donations from public to support 25% free seats and such donations be considered as tax paid to the govt by the donating party. Too many illogical laws & judgements....

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ankitha - vizag
om sai ram

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karan - new delhi
We are well educated and qualified but still we are unemployed . What is the point of improving the standard of education when government cannot provide employment to the people according to their caliber.

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ajay singh - jamshedpur
25% reservation for poor kids appear to be a great social idea.But the number of seats and number of schools need to be increased in order to accommodate poor kids. If some children from educated families don`t get admission in any good school because of lack of seats then what type of right to education is this.Does the supreme court think about everybody? Media should raise this issue. I am not against reservation but I want the number of schools to increase according to population growth.And the private schools might burden the 75% of the students to pay the school fees for 25% poor students.