Kendriya Vidyalaya Admissions: Supreme Court upholds 6 years minimum age criteria for Class 1.

The Supreme Court has dismissed petitions challenging the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) decision to raise the minimum age for admission to Class I from 5 to 6 years from the 2022-2023 academic year.

A bench headed by Justice SK Kaul dismissed the appeal of some parents against the Delhi High Court’s decision, which had upheld the move of raising the age of Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan to 6 years. The Single Bench of the Delhi High Court had dismissed the petitions filed against it on 11 April.

KVS had contended before the high court that its decision was in keeping with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

Agreeing with the KVS stand, the single bench said, “No doubt, the policy which was formulated in 2020 is yet to be implemented across schools in Delhi, despite the same having been already implemented in 21 states but once the statute i.e., the RTE Act, 2009 in itself places the KVS in a separate category coupled with the fact that all branches of KVS across the country, being run by the same management are obliged to follow the uniform criteria, the anxiousness of the KVS to introduce the age criteria of 6 years in accordance with the NEP, 2020 is well understood.”

Appeals against this were dismissed by a Division Bench of the HC on April 13.

Rejecting the Special Leave Petition filed against this, the SC bench of Justices Kaul and M M Sundresh said in its April 25 order, “We are informed that the other petitioners preferred a Letter Patent Appeal before the Division Bench of the High Court, and we may say, rightly so, and that appeal has also been dismissed on 13.04.2022.

We have also gone through the order of the learned Single Judge assailed before us and are in full agreement with the view taken and give our imprimatur to the same. The Special Leave Petition is accordingly, dismissed”.

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