HC directs shifting students of 100-yr-old Rajputana Rifles school

The Delhi High Court Monday directed forthwith shifting of the students studying in a dilapidated 100-year-old school building in the cantonment area here and asked the Army and the AAP government to immediately accommodate them in their schools. A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar observed that there was an emergent situation of shifting the students as the building of Rajputana Rifles Heroes Memorial Senior Secondary School here was in a dilapidated condition.

The 300 students will be temporarily shifted to two schools -- one maintained by Delhi Cantonment Board and another by the Delhi government, it said. "In view of willingness showed by the respondents (Army and Delhi government), we hereby direct them to immediately accommodate Rajputana Rifles Heroes Memorial Senior Secondary School students to the schools of the respondents because the building is in dilapidated condition," the court said.

It also asked the authorities to provide transportation to the students to and from the schools for six months. Regarding the issue as to which authority would re-construct the school at the land where the building exists, the court noted the Army's firm stand that they are in need of the 3.229 acres of land.

The Army said it was a reserved land, classified as A2 according to a 1933 notification, and therefore, could not be handed over to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. Additional standing counsel of the Delhi government, Sanjoy Ghose, said there was a problem in finding another land for the school in the city but it was ready to re-construct a high-tech building at its own cost there.

The bench left it to the discretion of the Army for re-construction of the school building or otherwise, if it wanted to use the land for some other purpose. "If any wisdom prevail over the respondents (Army) to re-construct the building later on, we leave it to the high ranking military officers to do so. We make it explicitly clear that there is no legal obligation on them to re-construct the school," it said.

The court passed the order on a PIL filed by NGO Social Jurist, which has alleged that the Rajputana Rifles School, in existence since 1919 and taken over by the Delhi government in 1975, is in a horrible condition. Earlier, the Delhi government had said that while it could accommodate the students in other schools, it needed the school in question as its other educational institutions were "overburdened".

The plea, through advocate Ashok Agarwal, has said though the school is open for all, it mainly caters to the children of the servants of military officials, who are not in a position to educate their kids in private schools. It has alleged that the school lacks basic amenities, including drinking water, functional toilets, science and computer laboratories, clean classrooms and a proper boundary wall and several posts of teaching staff are lying vacant.