Mumbai: The Bombay High Court vacation bench on Friday offered relief to over 500 private unaided schools across Maharashtra by staying Maharashtra government’s requisition to deploy their teachers and employees for compulsory census duties.A division bench of Justices Gautam Ankhad and Sandesh Patil, while granting urgent relief in a batch of petitions filed by Unaided Schools Forum and other associations challenging the requisitions, said the rules under the Census Act cited by the state can’t be interpreted to authorize compulsory deployment of private unaided school teachers for census duty. Rule 5(5) for instance, was not an independent source of substantive power authorising compulsory requisition of private school teachers, the HC observed.The HC issued notice to the state, its director of census operations and charge officers across Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations and sought replies within four weeks to petitions.The Forum, based in Mumbai, Independent English Schools from Pune, Private Unaided School Management, in Dombivli (east and Members of International Schools Association in Mumbai had petitioned the HC for urgent relief against their staff being roped in for mandatory duty in the ongoing Census-2027. Senior counsel Venkatesh Dhond, for the associations, sought urgent intervention saying “coercive steps by way of show cause notices and registration of First Information Reports have been initiated against teachers and staff members of the petitioners’ associations for non-compliance with directions for census duties.’’ Besides, only local authorities are obliged to make their staff available for census duty, he argued.Last June, the Central home ministry had declared Census would be conducted across India.The first phase for house listing and housing census is scheduled to be carried out between April 2026 and Sep 2026, during which enumerators undertake house visits to collect data.State govt pleader Anjali Helekar and senior counsel RV Govilkar for the Census op director defended the requisition order of Feb 27, 2026, issued by a charge officer as being legally valid under the Census Act provisions and said the schools were attempting to create an “artificial distinction’’ between teachers in aided and unaided schools, when section 4(2) of the Census Act read with Rule 3 of the Census Rules specifically authorizes appointment of teachers, clerks and other officials as enumerators. Under the Right to Education Act, even unaided schools are ‘schools’, argued Govilkar and Helekar. A stay now when it’s school vacation, in fact, would delay the census exercise and affect govt planning and policy decisions, the state argued.The HC said the vacation-time argument of state can’t be accepted as an answer to the petitioners’ grievance. Substantial numbers have been requisitioned for census duties, the HC said noting it would “disrupt the regular academic activities and impair the right of students to uninterrupted education. Hence, interim protection cannot be denied.’’The “census exercise can always be undertaken through governmental machinery, local authorities or aided institutions, which the statutory framework itself contemplates,’’ the HC order said and kept open legal issues on delegation of power by the state. The matter is now listed on July 31 for final disposal.
