Provide gadgets, internet pack to poor students for online classes: HC to schools

The Delhi High Court Friday directed private as well as government schools like KVs to provide gadgets and an internet package to poor students for online classes, saying not doing so amounts to “discrimination” and creates a “digital apartheid”.

To separate such students from others in the same class due to non-availability of a gadget or a device would generate “a feeling of inferiority” that may “affect their hearts and minds unlikely ever to be undone”, the court said.

A bench of Justices Manmohan and Sanjeev Narula said if a school decides to voluntarily provide synchronous face-to-face real time online education as a method of teaching, “they will have to ensure that the students belonging to economically weaker section (EWS) or disadvantaged group (DG) category also have access and are able to avail the same”.