Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Wednesday observed that the State should not treat children’s need for a school in their locality as a burden on the exchequer.
The funds available with the State needed to be better utilized for setting up schools based on the needs of the locality, the court held.
The court was considering a plea by the State against a single bench order directing it to consider the application for granting a UP section at Chembra, Palakkad. The single bench had found that the school was a necessity.
A division bench comprising Justice Thottathil B.Radhakrishnan and Justice B.P. Ray dismissed the State’s plea.
The State had filed a plea seeking to condone the delay in filing an appeal against the single bench order. The court found that the State had filed the plea after 362 days. It stated that the delay had occurred due to the delay in getting legal opinion.
The court observed that if a government was to take 362 days to decide whether an appeal had to be filed or not, that would definitely expose the administrative inefficiency that could never be treated as a ground to condone delay.
The court observed that there were 191 students in the LP section and the nearest UP school was 3 km away from the school.
“Walking long distances may be good for health but in a geographically miniscule state trumpeted as God’s Own Country, children should not be forced to walk to their schooling at the UP level”, the court said.
