NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has sought the stand of the Delhi government and Delhi Minorities Commission on a plea challenging the scheme providing for reimbursement of tuition fees of school students belonging to minority communities.
A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad issued notice on public interest litigation by Avinash Malhotra who claimed that the exclusion of students from non-minority, low-income backgrounds based on religion and caste was unconstitutional.
The petitioner said that this ‘constitutional hurdle’ can be overcome by ‘tweaking the policy’ if reimbursement of fees is provided to all those who belong to low-income families and not only minority communities.
“The respondent notified a scheme for the Reimbursement of Tuition Fees for Minorities Categories students studying in Class I to XII, which is under challenge in the present petition. As per the scheme, minorities students with family income below Rs three Lakh per annum were eligible for obtaining reimbursement of tuition fees and other compulsory fees in recognized public schools in Delhi,” said the plea filed through lawyer Awantika Manohar.
“It is the case of the petitioner that this policy is violative of Article 14 and 15 of the Constitution. It does conform with either Article 15(4) or 15(6),” it said. The petitioner said that if the benefit of the reimbursement scheme is extended to all low-income families, it would be in consonance with Article 46 of the Constitution, which demands that the state would promote the educational and economic interests of weaker sections of the people.
The plea further alleged that the policy was not based on any quantifiable data to identify socially and educationally backward classes of people in Delhi and it simply granted a special provision to all minorities. “Identification of socially and educationally backward classes of society cannot be done simply by granting minorities’ from families with low-income, benefits. Such a policy evidently is not based on quantifiable data, but appears to have been on the whims and fancies of the Respondent,” it read.
‘Give info on MCD’s assembly panel’
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday sought the stand of the government on a plea by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) challenging the constitution of a ‘Committee of Municipal Corporation’ by the Delhi Assembly. The MCD also objected to the subsequent demands by the Committee of Municipal Corporation about the information on the corporation’s ‘internal affairs’.
Justice Yashwant Varma said that the ‘matter requires consideration’ and granted three weeks to the government to file its counter affidavit to the petition which claims that only the Centre has the power of superintendence over MCD’s affairs. As the senior counsel for the MCD urged the court to pass an interim order protecting it against committee orders seeking the presence of its officers, the court asked the Delhi government to ‘desist’ for the time being. Counsel appearing for the Delhi government asked the court to list the matter after a ‘short date’ and hear its stand before passing any interim directions in favour of the petitioner.