Gurgaon: A district court has ordered The Shri Ram Public School to admit a four-year-old child under RTE category within 15 days after it rejected his allotment because his home was more than 3km away. The court found the govt’s own online lottery system had allowed the family to choose the school without filtering out options beyond the permitted neighbourhood radius.The Aug 18 order by additional district judge Gagan Geet Kaur came on an appeal filed for Reyansh Chauhan, who was allotted the school in DLF Phase 4 as his first choice through the education department’s official RTE lottery on April 29 for the 2026-27 session.The school, however, rejected the allotment after scrutinising the documents, saying his home was beyond 3km and therefore outside the applicable neighbourhood criterion. The court, however, found a crucial flaw in the admission system. It pointed out that when parents entered their addresses, the portal did not automatically restrict them to eligible neighbourhood schools. They could select a school even if it lay beyond the prescribed radius.The court said parents from economically weaker sections could not reasonably be expected to understand the technical definitions of “neighbourhood area” and “neighbourhood school” under the Haryana RTE Rules. Once an address was entered, it said, the portal should have displayed only schools meeting the criterion.Such a procedural lapse, the court observed, “fails the objective” of the RTE Act. It held that the parents could not be blamed for a choice the govt’s own system had permitted.The issue was particularly significant because the school had 45 seats allotted for EWS children, but it admitted only one and rejected 16 allotments on the distance ground. The school told the court the rejected cases had been sent to the block-level monitoring committee. However, its counsel, assisted by school staff present in court, was unaware of the latest status.The court also warned of the consequence for the child. Denying admission at this stage could mean the loss of a “precious year” of his education, which could not be compensated in monetary terms. It asked the school to grant admission in accordance with the RTE allotment within 15 days.The court further noted that leaving reserved seats vacant could undermine the very purpose of the RTE provision, which seeks to give children from weaker sections access to private schools alongside other students.It relied on a recent Supreme Court ruling in Lucknow Public School, Eldico vs State of Uttar Pradesh, holding that a neighbourhood school cannot delay or deny admission to a child allotted by the competent state authority or sit in appeal over that allotment.The school had argued that the computerised lottery generated only a “provisional allotment” and did not create an absolute right to admission. It maintained that the child’s address failed the distance criterion and its rejection followed departmental guidelines.
