The Allahabad High Court on Thursday has issued notice on the Public Interest Litigation seeking directions to all the schools affiliated with C.B.S.E to waive off the fee of the special need children/ the children covered under the benchmark disabilities provided under the Disabilities Act, 2016.
The PIL was filed before the High Court by a student of 3rd Class studying in Amit International School, Lucknow through his father, wherein the petitioner is differently abled children and his speech and other developments are delayed due to autism which comes under the benchmark disability provided under the benchmark disability Act, the petitioner stated that he is getting several therapies at different therapy centres for his speech and other developments.
It was further mentioned in the petition that due to COVID-19 infection, the government of India directed to close all schools and due to lockdown the petitioner’s school started online classes to all the students and also added the name of the petitioner for the online classes, whereby because of the petitioner’ s development disorders, he could not attend the online classes. Thereafter, the school sent several messages to the petitioner’s parents’ mobile phones to deposit the fee from the month of lockdown till the closure period of the school.
The petitioner submitted that there are thousands of the children in Lucknow City who are suffering from several disabilities related to development / mental and they are unable to attend the online classes and he further added that to resolve the problems of the differently abled children, the inclusive Education Act named as “The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 came into force which provides several facilities, like special educator and other aid to these kind of students at the school.
Acting upon the plea, the division bench of Justice Pankaj Kumar Jaiswal & Justice Saurabh Lavania had taken up the matter through videoconferencing, and issued notice to respondent school through e-mail, WhatsApp or SMS.
-India Legal Bureau