The Delhi High Court has dismissed a PIL seeking directions to expedite the finalisation process of the Delhi School Education (Amendment) Bill, 2015, which proposes to prohibit the screening process for admission to nursery or pre-primary level schools.
A division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad passed the order on NGO Social Jurist’s PIL after having reserved it on May 17. While doing so, it said that courts cannot interfere in the legislative procedure as it refused to direct Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena to give assent or return the Delhi School Education (DSE) Bill.
The high court said that it would not be appropriate for it to issue any kind of writ to a Governor whether to accept or reject a Bill within the stipulated time.
The court said that it is always for the Governor to give his assent or withhold his assent to any Bill, however desirable the legislation may be, the court said.
While exercising this discretion, the Governor cannot feel bound on the act and advice of his ministers and courts also cannot control or interfere in this process, the court added.
However, it noted that if the Bill does not get an assent, Article 200 of the Constitution indicates that the Governor must as soon as possible after the presentation of the Bill to him return it together with a message to the House/Houses to reconsider the Bill or any specified provision.
“In the considered opinion of this court, even though the Bill has been passed by the House, it is always open to the Governor to agree or to send the Bill back to the House and this court ought not pass a writ of mandamus directing the Ggovernor to act,” the court observed.
The case’s lawyer Ashok Agarwal had earlier referred to Section 24 of the Government of NCT of Delhi Act, 1991, and had argued that seven years delay in finalising the pro-child bill is totally unjustified.
On May 2, the court had refused to direct the Delhi government to pass or implement the Bill.
The bench had also asked Aggarwal to seek instructions on the matter.
Santosh Kumar Tripathi, the standing counsel for the Delhi government, had objected right away claiming that Aggarwal had protested the Bill when it was first introduced in 2015 and was now calling for its implementation.
However, Aggarwal had said that the protest was made against two Bills which “took away the right of teachers” and not against the one which is the subject matter of the PIL.
The bench had said that no direction or mandamus can be passed to the government to implement a Bill as sought in the plea.
“You are doing dharna and all, and then filing this PIL… You are an interested person. We cannot pass a mandamus. Show us one judgment. Under PIL, you throw any piece of paper on us! We cannot issue mandamus to the government… Under which provision can we issue mandamus to the government,” the Chief Justice had asked.
The 2015 Bill, which was referred to as a “child-friendly Bill” in the petition, was “hanging” between the Centre and Delhi government for the past seven years without any explanation, according to the petition.
Additionally, the NGO had claimed that it appealed to the authorities on March 21 to expeditiously finalise the Bill. On April 11, though, the Union of India had responded, saying that the two governments are still working on finalising the Bill.
“The petitioner submits that people have a right to know why a child-friendly Bill has not seen the light of the day even after seven years of its unanimously passing from Delhi Assembly in 2015. It is submitted that this child-friendly Bill banning screening procedure in nursery admissions has been hanging between the Centre and Delhi government for the last seven years without any justification and against the public interest,” the plea stated.
More than 1.5 lakh nursery level admissions occur annually in private schools in Delhi and the screening procedures are applied to children older than three years old, in violation of the law and spirit of the 2009 Right to Information Act, it was contended.
“There is no justification at all to not prohibit screening procedures at the nursery level and therefore, respondents are required to finalise the Bill as soon as possible to do justice to tiny tots of the country,” the plea stated.
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