New Delhi: Petitions filed by various private unaided and minority schools against the Right to Education (RTE) Act-2009 will be heard by a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, comprising of five judges.
The RTE Act passed in 2009 ensures free and compulsory education in a neighborhood school till elementary education for all children who are aged between 6 and 14, in the country.
As per sources, the petitions had been referred to the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court by the three-judge Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar, after it had been pointed out by the petitioners that several constitutional provisions needed interpretation.
The petitioners included the Society for Unaided Private School of Rajasthan and the Forum of Minority Schools. They had asserted that the Act included all schools under its ambit in violation of the law.
Moreover, the petitioners have alleged that the RTE Act-2009 violates the fundamental right of private unaided schools provided under Article 19(1) (g) of the Constitution and that of minority schools under Article 29 and 30 of the Constitution.
According to the petition, a flaw in the RTE Act is that it completely fails to acknowledge the issue of quality education. The Act discriminates between children, as it applies the faulty concept of neighborhood schools, does not say anything about pre-primary education for children between the ages of 3 to 6 years and does not mention learning levels of children.
The Act implies that unaided and minority schools would now have to admit students from their neighborhood without any choice. This means that children from poor financial backgrounds will have to study in schools in their neighborhood which do not provide quality education.
Also, the RTE Act does not provide a right to education for students between the ages of 3 to 6. The petitioners said that due to these flaws in the RTE Act, schools had been directed to provide free and compulsory education to 25 % students and hence violated the fundamental rights of the petitioners to set up and administer educational institutions under Article 30 (1) of the Constitution.
