?25% quota for poor in private schools must

Updated on: Saturday, July 23, 2011

The Centre on Thursday remained firm on implementing Right to Education (RTE) Act without any dilution and told the Supreme Court that even private schools have to keep 25% of its seats for students from weaker and economically disadvantaged sections.

Responding to the challenge to the constitutional validity of RTE Act from private schools, which argued that it frustrated their fundamental right to trade, attorney general G E Vahanvati said the government had made a provision to reimburse private schools the expenses incurred for admitting such students in 25% of its seats.

“If the schools insist on absolute autonomy, the goal of integrated universal elementary education will be compromised,” he said before a bench of Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justices K S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar.

“Therefore, under the balancing principle, the autonomy of the institutions to admit students of their choice must be subject to admitting 25% students belonging to weaker and disadvantaged sections,” Vahanvati said. He said the RTE Act was enacted to secure the fundamental right to education of children and steps taken by the government to further their right under Article 21-A of the Constitution could not be construed as stifling the private schools’ right to trade under Article 19(1)(g).

The AG said the relative importance of children’s right as against the right to establish and administer a school was internationally recognised. “The autonomy claimed by private schools must yield to the larger social imperative underlying the right to life under Article 21 and allowing the supremacy of ‘autonomy’ would be detrimental to the constitutional goals of equality and inclusiveness,” he said.

He said admission given to students from weaker and disadvantaged sections would help build a heterogeneous population of school children across caste, class and gender lines and promote social cohesion.

?25% quota for poor in private schools must

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