A Division Bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Nataraj Rangaswamy of Karnataka HC asked the State government to consider Schools Re-opening having phased manner policy whilst keeping in track of covid cases in each taluk, rather than uniform policy for state.
The Court was hearing a Plea in which government advocate apprised that Vidyagama programme would be restarted from January 1, 2021 and “The State is interested in recommencing Vidyagama from classes 1 to 10”.
The Court passed the following directions in a petition seeking directions to the government to provide laptops, tablets, and other digital resources free of cost to enable school children belonging to economically weaker sections to attend online classes:
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- State to make a specific appeal to private players for aid (for laptops and tablets for economically weaker students) to be sought to through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as envisaged under Section 153 of the Companies Act so that disruption of education of students is mitigated.
- State to place on record the steps taken to ensure that the admission of children from Anganawadi to 1st standard is not hampered amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
- State to ensure that children have taken re-admission to higher classes during the COVID-19 pandemic after Schools Re-opening.
“These directions are passed by the Court in order to ascertain whether children have been forced to child labour, child marriage or child trafficking.”
The State has been directed to file its status report of Schools Re-opening on January 18.
