Sibling policy: Court asks for particulars of officials’ children in ‘elite’ institutions

CJ Khan accepts schools’ plea with Rs1 million as an indemnity bond.

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday not only issued notices against senior officials of the education department but also sought particulars of their children studying in ‘elite’ institutions.

Notices were issued to the higher education secretary, literacy and schools secretary, chairmen of all boards of intermediate and secondary education and education regulatory authority.

The court also asked for income tax details of officials whose children are studying in ‘high-profile’ schools.

Furthermore, the court has asked for details about children of the chief minister, governor, chief secretary, administrative secretaries, and all heads of the attached departments and names of the schools they study in.

A PHC division bench comprising the chief justice and Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth issued the orders in wake of the governments’ failure to formulate the sibling policy.

According to the policy, only the first child of a family is entitled to pay full fee while the siblings studying in the same school is to be charged half.

Earlier in February 2011, after writ petitions were filed from private institutions against the policy, a PHC bench dismissed them and declared fee concession to siblings studying in the same schools, legal. The court directed parents to approach the regulatory authority if the school does not abide by the law.

Schools including the Fauji Foundation School Mardan and The City School were refused interim relief after their affiliations with their respective boards were cancelled when they failed to comply with the court’s orders.

On Thursday, counsel for the petitioners Athar Minallah said: “Had that judgment of 2011 been implemented in true spirit, a great change would have been observed.” However, he later asked for relief, requesting that if their writ petition is not accepted, the future of many students would be at stake and they would not be able to appear for their matriculation exams. CJ Khan then accepted his plea with a sum of Rs1 million as an indemnity bond.

The bench observed that the judgment had directed the education authority to provide an effective system to regulate the sibling policy and questioned as to why the provincial government had not forwarded the summary of the mechanism to the law department, as yet.

“It is not a good omen for the future of the country that the verdicts of the Supreme Court and high courts are violated by the elite,” said CJ Khan.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2012.