Bombay High Court slams Balmohan school for refusing admissions

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has slammed Balmohan Vidyamandir for refusing to grant admission to students on flimsy grounds. The court held that when the school education department allotted seats to students, it was aware of the distance at which they were living from the school and hence, the school had no reason to refuse admission on grounds that the students lived three kilometres away.

The court also rejected the school’s contention that parents had submitted false income certificates and said that students should have been given provisional admission for the year 2016-17.

On Saturday, a division bench of justices B.R. Gavai and R.I. Chagla was hearing a writ petition filed by some parents whose children were refused admission by Balmohan Vidyamandir school in Dadar last year. The parents prayed that the school had wronged them and refused to abide by the government order to private schools to admit students from economically weaker sections of society under 25 per cent reservation quota. The parents demanded that directions be issued to concerned authorities to rectify the injustice.

When the matter came up for hearing on Saturday, the school’s counsel Deepa Chauhan justified the school’s stance by saying that addresses of the parents showed that they lived three kilometres away from the school.