The Delhi High Court has asked the state’s Education department to knock on every door in the Capital to identify disabled children who are denied their right to go to school.

“Map Delhi to find out disabled children. You have to take a home-to-home account of the number of disabled children who are not going to school,” Chief Justice A P Shah directed Education Secretary Rakesh Mohan, who was summoned to the court for the hearing recently.

The Bench clarified that mere counting the heads of disabled children enrolled in government schools would not suffice to give a complete picture of how many such children are denied education, the “Constitutional right of every child in the country”.

The court said that a door-to-door survey is a necessity as many parents have a “tendency to not disclose the disability of the child”.

“What is to be done immediately is to give us a plan,” the Bench told Mohan. “Explain what we need in infrastructure for the disabled. Ascertain how many children require transport facilities to reach school and back — give us a complete picture of what is needed to be done to have disabled children in school,” the Chief Justice said.

The government is to prepare a proposal by October 21, the next date of hearing.

The court also added that it understood that it would be difficult for the government to equip all schools in Delhi with disabled-friendly features, so the state would do best by picking certain sample schools to begin with.

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