Gujarat high court on Thursday issued notice to the state government and the Centre on a PIL seeking implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act and the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy .
Petitioner Mujahid Nafees has submitted before the court that the Act and the policy are for holistic development of children during pre-primary stage.He said that the ECCE policy is implemented through the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme run by the department of women and child development.
Under ICDS, training was imparted and pre-education kits were distributed. However, there is huge vacancy at all levels to carry out the responsibilities for successful running of the scheme. Under the scheme, there is a provision for separate sanitation facility for children and workers but only 33% of anganwadi centres have toilet facility across the state.
The PIL also claimed that none of the anganwadi centres has electricity connection.There are some 9,000 vacancies of ICDS workers. Instead of 26 DPOs, there are only 11 DPOs posted across the state.
The petitioner said that these issues were raised before the government authorities, but nothing happened. Hence, the PIL was filed.
After hearing the case, a bench of Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice J B Pardiwala issued notices to the secretaries concerned of state government and the Centre asking them to give replies by October 1.
