Delhi High Court dismisses challenge to age criterion for admission to Kendriya Vidyalayas

The Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed a bunch of petitions challenging the minimum age criterion of six years for admission to Class I of Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV)..Single-judge Justice Rekha Palli said that once a conscious and well considered decision has already been taken by the experts that the entry age for admission to Class-I should be six years, the Court cannot and should not interfere.“Merely because some inconvenience is being caused to the petitioners who will have to wait for the next academic year to apply for admission to the KVS, cannot be a ground to direct the KVS to make an exception for its schools located in Delhi. Any such direction will have a rippling effect on the age criteria applicable to KVS schools situated all across the country including states wherein the National Education Policy, 2020 has been implemented and consequently, the minimum age for admission to Class-I has been fixed as 6 years in all schools in the said States,” the Court said..The petitions had challenged the minimum age criterion on the grounds that it is arbitrary, discriminatory, unjust and therefore, violative of Article 14, 21 and 21A of the Constitution.The pleas said that KVs made the change out of the blue by uploading the guidelines just four days before the admission process started and that the age criterion of five years is still continuing in many schools..The Court, however, said that that the age criterion of 5+ is still continuing in some of the schools overlooking the fact that the National Education Policy, 2020 is being introduced in the country in a phased manner and the purpose of the guidelines is to bring uniformity in the admission criteria in all the branches of KVs across the country.Justice Palli also noted that KVs have already received seven lakh applications for admission into Class I and these applicants are between six to seven years of age therefore if five-year-old children are now permitted to join, it would lead to huge imbalance in the class making situation almost unworkable. "Not only will the syllabus have to be re-worked, even otherwise, admission of 5-year-old children with children who could be almost 7 years old, would be a highly undesirable situation. The balance of the convenience also, therefore, tilts more in the favour of the respondents than that of the petitioners,” the Court said. The petitions were, therefore, dismissed. .Advocates Ashok Agarwal, Kumar Utkarsh, Manoj Kumar, Sandeep Deshmukh, Nishant Sharma, Rakesh K Sharma, Ajeet Yadav, Jugesh Aspal, Subhash Chandran K R, Yogamaya MG and Subhash TM appeared for the petitioners. The Central government was represented by Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Chetan Sharma, Central Government Standing Counsel (CGSC) Apoorv Kurup along with advocates S Rajappa, Gowrishankar, Amit Gupta, Sahaj Garg, Rishav Dubey, Mohit Prasad and Jitendra Kumar Tripathi. Additional Standing Counsel Rishikesh Kumar along with advocates Sheenu Priya and Sudhir Shukla appeared for Delhi government. .[Read Order]