Kendriya Vidyalaya Admissions: Plea in Delhi HC against KVS Class 1 admission age limit

Kendriya Vidyalaya Admissions: A writ petition has been submitted in the Delhi High Court challenging the Kendriya Vidyalaya Admissions criteria. The petitioner seeks the court's intervention and issuance of a direction in Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) Class 1 admission criteria that only allows a child of 6 years instead of 5 years.  The petitioner is a kid through her father, Pawan Kumar. She informed the Court that before the academic year 2022–23, the minimum age of admission for Class 1 in respondent KVS was 5 years as of March 31 and highlighted that the new rules introduced by the respondent KVS were "arbitrary, discriminatory, unjust, unreasonable, and violative of the fundamental right to education of a citizen as guaranteed to her under Articles 14, 21, and 21-A of the Constitution of India read with the provisions of the Delhi School Education Act, 1973, and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009."

KVS Class 1 Admission 2022: Plea In Delhi High Court seeks change in Kendriya Vidyalaya Class 1 Admission Criteria

The petitioner has urged the court that she would be 5 years of age as of March 31 and wants to take admission in Class 1 in Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan in the academic year 2022–23. The petitioner further informed the court that Kendriya Vidyalaya Class 1 admission eligibility criteria was changed just 4 days before the admission process started. The plea mentioned that new guidelines say that "as per the mandate of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the entry age for Class 1 has been revised to 6 plus years with effect from Academic Session 2022-23".  The petitioner then highlighted that the central government's NEP 2022 has no such rule that supports the admission criteria of KVS. As a matter of fact, the NEP 2022 has not made any changes to the age of school-going children. 

The change in the admission process to 6+ years is an invention of the KVS without any mandate from the NEP 2020 said the petitioner. The lawyers, Ashok Agarwal and Kumar Utkarsh, who were representing the petitioner before the court, further stated that after seeing the impugned admission criteria 2022–23 of KVS, the petitioner sent a legal notice dated February 27, 2022, to the respondents, but there has been no response from respondent KV.

Image: ANI