Children get samosas, juices and admission in schools

New Delhi: In a rare gesture, Delhi High Court Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal on Friday ordered samosas and juices for 52 children, who along with their parents came to the court after being denied admission to Delhi government schools.

After seeing the courtroom filled with children and their parents, Justice Mittal inquired about the reason for their presence and expressed her concern over their plight.

A bench of Justices Mittal and C Hari Shankar directed the Delhi government to give admission to 400 students, whose details were given to the court, and other similarly placed children in the national capital.

In the middle of court hearing, Justice Mittal asked NGO Social Jurist's advocate Ashok Agarwal, who had filed the plea on behalf of the students, to take the children, aged 6 to 15, to the canteen and buy them samosas.

Later, the judge called her private secretary and asked him to bring samosas and juices for the children, who were told not to leave the court without taking the refreshments.

After the bench rose, the kids had the refreshments inside the chief justice's court during the lunch time.

The children were accompanied by their parents. During the hearing, the bench asked the Delhi government's counsel to look into the issue and said, "We don't like seeing children in the court.

Please do some thing." Advocate Agarwal said this was just a sample and there are thousands of other students who have not got admission to the government schools.

The court directed Delhi government counsel Shadan Farasat to hold camps at different places in the city and give admission to such students.

The bench was hearing a plea for direction to the Directorate of Education (DoE) to forthwith grant admission to students who have been allegedly wrongly denied admissions to government schools.

The DoE had told the court that it was carrying out verification of the students whose names were provided to it by the NGO.

It had also said while some students have been admitted, the verification of others will take some more time.

The NGO's counsel had earlier told the court that the students were denied admission by Delhi government schools on flimsy grounds.