On Tuesday, the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sanghatan issued revised admission guidelines for the academic year 2022-2023 discontinuing the MPs’ discretionary quota in recommending the admission of students to Kendriya Vidyalayas.
This is after the MPs demanded that the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sanghatan should either do away with the discretionary quota or should allow more than 10 recommendations in every academic year. Recently in the Budget Session of parliament, senior Congress leader Manish Tewari and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sushil Kumar Modi, had demanded that the MP quota to Kendriya Vidyalaya admissions be either scrapped or its limit be increased.
Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan scraps discretionary quota of MPs for admission in Kendriya Vidyalayas as per revised admission guidelines which’ve no mention of quotas for MPs for admission into KVs
— ANI (@ANI) April 27, 2022
Earlier this month, KVS had put on hold discretionary quotas for admissions to KVs pic.twitter.com/kpFKq7dukp
According to the reports, the MP quota at the Kendriya Vidyalayas, also known as KVS Special Dispensation Admission Scheme allowed a parliamentarian to recommend a maximum of 10 students from their respective constituencies for admission in classes 1 to 9 of Kendriya Vidyalas.
The revised guidelines also stated that those children who have lost both of their parents due to the COVID-19 pandemic will be considered for admission over and above the class strength under PM CARES for Children Scheme. “The admission of such students will be done based on the list given by the District Magistrate of the concerned District, subject to 10 children per Kendriy Vidyalaya and a maximum of two children per class”, the official statement by the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan read.
“These children will be exempted from payment of fees (Tuition fee, Computer fund, and VVN) from Classes I to XII,” it added. Meanwhile, some new provisions have been added in the revised admission guidelines which include 50 seats for the wards of group B and C central police organizations such as CRPF, BSF, ITBP, SSB, CISF, NDRF, and Assam Rifles based on a list provided by the ministry of home affairs.
Further, 60 admissions in Kendriya Vidyalayas across the country can be utilized exclusively for children returning from abroad along with their parents after their posting in current or previous years, and they would be considered for admission up to November 30.
In addition to the changes in the MP’s quota, the Sangathan has also raised the age limit for Class 1 admissions to 6 years. Earlier, the lower age limit for Class 1 admissions was 5 years but with the coming of the National Education Policy, NEP 2020, the age limit has been increased to 6 years. However, for the remaining classes, the age limit remains the same.
The KVS Special Dispensation Admission Scheme was introduced in the year 1975 and since then a total of 7880 admissions every year were possible against this scheme across 1,248 KVs in India. The scheme was scrapped in 1997, but it was reinstated within a year. It was also suspended briefly in 2010 under the UPA-II government. Reportedly, after Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan took over the charge last year, the government scrapped the MP’s discretionary quota for admissions in the Kendriya Vidyalayas.
