M A I N   N E W S

Funds flow free for Delhi school run by wives of babusAditi Tandon
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 21
The government is generally cash-strapped when it comes to expanding the school network. But it has enough money to fund an elite school in the capital run by wives of top central bureaucrats. Why?

That’s the question most Lok Sabha MPs were asking today as the government admitted that the elite school had received funds from the government. “In recent past, HRD Ministry hasn’t given financial assistance to any private unaided school. However, the ministry released Rs 5 crore during 1995 and 1997 as a one-time grant for the construction of its building. Sanskriti was the only school to receive a Rs 8-crore central grant for the construction of a building in Delhi,” HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said when the issue was raised during question hour by Jaywantrao Awale. Between 2007 and 2009, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) under the PMO gave Rs 3 crore to the school for “construction”.

Naturally, MPs, including JDU’s Sharad Yadav, questioned government’s soft corner for the school which doesn’t reserve seats for poor SC/ST students but receives central funding. Interestingly, the wife of the incumbent Union Cabinet Secretary is the ex-offico chairperson of the school.

Inquiries by the Tribune further revealed that Sanskriti had recently appealed to the Delhi High Court against a 2006 order of the Chief Information Commissioner declaring it a public authority under the RTI Act, making it obligatory on its part to divulge details of monetary grants. The order followed a petition by one Manju Kumar who asked Sanskriti for details of funding and how children of central government and defence officials were admitted without entrance tests. Kumar moved the CIC after Sanskriti declined information claiming private unaided status.

Case files, accessed by TNS, show the school told the CIC it received only initial amounts from central departments and the Reserve Bank of India for construction and later on it was self-financed.

The High Court, however, had made important observations in the case, with Justice Ravinder Bhat saying: “There’s opaqueness about these grants. Interestingly, the HRD Ministry didn’t sanction the grant and individual ministries (like Customs Department, Reserve Bank of India) sanctioned monies apparently from their budgets. By all accounts, grants to the tune of Rs 24 crore were given to the school without obligation of return.”

The government defended its stand. “Sanskriti is a unique institution working for students’ holistic development. It has adopted a nearby slum and slum children study there. It’s not functioning outside the purview of government policy. Wives of bureaucrats who run it don’t charge anything. More states should replicate the model,” Sibal said as PM Manmohan Singh listened.

Sixty per cent Sanskriti students are wards of civil servants/defence personnel; 20 per cent are general category and 15 per cent from economically weaker sections. Presently, 146 EWS and 60 special students study at this school, for which DoPT is the nodal agency. It was DoPT which first mooted the special funding model for Sanskriti in 1988.