BENGALURU: Dissatisfied with the affidavit filed by the State Government with regard to Out of School Children (OSC), the Karnataka High Court on Monday said that the method adopted by the State to identify those children did not appear to be scientific.
The division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice H T Narendra Prasad had directed the Commissioner of Public Instructions PC Jaffer to file an affidavit on March 2019 explaining the scientific method for identifying out of school children and also the policy for bringing back those children to schools.
“Primafacie we are not satisfied with the State Government on the affidavit filed by PC Jaffer. A contention has been raised that 70,116 children were out of school in 2018. The affidavit does not clarify about those children who are admitted to schools. Moreover, the method used for identification does not appear to be scientific,” the court said in its hearing.
The court also ordered the Chief Secretary to file the affidavit by July 12, while adjourning the hearing to July 16. “The high-powered committee was constituted to ensure the prevention of children to drop out from schools, but it seems they have not met for a considerable time. We direct the Chief Secretary to explain as to why the Committee has not met,” the court further stated.
The court also said that the state government must gather data on how many of the 70,116 children had been admitted to schools in the recent past.
What is the case all about?
The court was hearing the public interest litigation registered suo motu on OSCs. On the last date of hearing, a government advocate had submitted a survey conducted in the months of November and December, 2018 for the academic year 2018-19 where about 70,000 children had been identified as OSCs. The court had then directed the government to take all measures to ensure that maximum number of students are brought back to the school.