New Delhi: Clarifying the scope of the Right to Education Act, Delhi High Court has underscored that the beneficial act only guarantees access to education and does not grant students the right to demand admission to a specific school.In a recent verdict, a bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia explained this difference while dismissing an appeal filed by a woman seeking admission for her child to a particular private school under the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) category.HC said it found no reason to tinker with a single judge’s opinion and noted that the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act aims to promote social inclusion and equal opportunity, but does not entitle parents to insist on admission in their preferred school.In this case, the child was allotted a private school through a computerised lottery conducted by Delhi govt’s directorate of education (DoE) for admission. However, the school declined to take the child, saying that admission for EWS-category children could not be granted until all seats for the general category were filled. The kid was placed on a waiting list.The DoE then offered the child a seat at another school, which was among the parent’s preferred options and located at a comparable distance. The parent, however, refused this offer and sought a court direction for admission to the original school.HC concluded that such a rejection of an option that was part of the parent’s preferred list of schools, was unjustified, especially as an alternative arrangement had been made to secure the child’s education.It also highlighted that at no stage was there any interim order granting provisional admission or reserving a seat for the child in the first school while the case was pending. As such, once the academic year ended, any right to admission for that year lapsed automatically.HC clarified that courts cannot create additional seats or grant admission for a subsequent academic year after a session ends, as doing so will be unfair to other eligible candidates competing for limited places.It also pointed out that a Supreme Court ruling related to medical admissions, which the counsel for the parent cited as a precedent, didn’t apply to school admissions, since such exceptional relief can be granted only in rare cases within strict timelines that were not met here.As a result, HC dismissed the appeal and confirmed that the right to education does not extend to selecting a specific institution or circumventing established procedures.
