From lottery draw to courtroom: A child’s fight for a school seat in Gurgaon

Court orders school to admit child

Gurgaon's district court has ordered The Shri Ram Public School to admit four-year-old Reyansh Chauhan under the Right to Education (RTE) category, after the school rejected his allotment because his home was more than three kilometres away. The order was issued on August 18 by Additional District Judge Dr Gagan Geet Kaur, and gives the school 15 days to comply.

The case began when Reyansh was allotted the school in DLF Phase 4 as his first choice through the education department's official RTE lottery on April 29 for the 2026-27 session. However, the school rejected the allotment, saying the distance fell outside the applicable neighbourhood criteria under the Haryana RTE Rules.

Family's legal battle

Reyansh's father, Rajpal, fought a two-month-long legal battle after the school's decision. Initially, the family approached the Civil Judge (Junior Division) for an interim mandatory injunction to force the school to admit the boy immediately. That plea was dismissed on July 13, with the lower court reasoning that granting the injunction would be tantamount to providing the primary relief before the trial concluded.

The family then appealed to the district court. Advocate Jaljeet Thara, representing the family, told The Indian Express, “The boy belongs to a poor family. The father is the only breadwinner and does odd jobs. We had to appeal after the lower court ruled in the school's favour.”

Court finds flaw in the portal

The district court overturned the lower court's decision, identifying a key procedural shortcoming in the state's admission system. The court observed that when parents entered their addresses on the portal, it did not automatically filter out schools that were beyond the permitted neighbourhood radius. As a result, families could choose a school even if it was outside the allowable zone.

The court said parents from economically weaker sections cannot reasonably be expected to understand the technical definitions of 'neighbourhood area' and 'neighbourhood school' under the Haryana RTE Rules. It held that once an address was entered, the portal should have displayed only schools meeting the neighbourhood criterion. The court called this procedural lapse a “fails the objective” of the RTE Act, and rejected the idea that the parents could be blamed for a choice that the government's own system had permitted.

The court further addressed the school's argument that the computerised lottery generated only a “provisional allotment” and did not create an absolute right. The school maintained that its rejection followed departmental guidelines, citing the distance ground. However, the court relied on a recent Supreme Court judgment in Lucknow Public School, Eldico vs State of UP, which holds that a neighbourhood school cannot sit in appeal over the decision of the competent state authority or delay admission once an allotment has been made.

The case: only one of 45 admitted

The matter underscored systemic problems within the process. The school had 45 seats allotted for EWS children, but it admitted only one and rejected 16 allotments on the distance ground. The school's counsel told the court that the rejected cases had been forwarded to the block-level monitoring committee, but the counsel, assisted by school staff, was unaware of the latest status.

The court expressed concern that the objective of the RTE Act was “indirectly being defeated when only one admission is granted out of 45 allotted seats.” It emphasised the importance of not losing a child's education year, saying that a 'precious year' could not be compensated monetarily.

Reacting to the school's rejection methods, the court said the actions amounted to “tactics to deprive the children of weaker sections of society of education so that they could not get education alongside children of elite society in private schools.”

The court also highlighted a May 5, 2026 directive from the Directorate of Elementary Education, Haryana, which reprimanded private unaided recognised schools over complaints of delaying or refusing admissions on untenable grounds.

Outlook

The decision sets a precedent. The court’s verdict underscores that the state’s own system must not disadvantage those it intends to protect, and that procedural errors should not bar a child from receiving education.