Shimla: The Himachal Pradesh High Court on Wednesday in a special case allowed an eight-year-old child Kashvi, a Class 3 student of Rainbow Public Senior Secondary School Dharamman, Palampur, to provisionally admit as a day scholar in class VIII in the same school.
The orders were passed by a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Mohammad Rafiq and Justice Jyotsna Rewal Dua on the Civil Writ Petition filed by Kashvi through her father Santosh Kumar.
In the petition, it was claimed that Kashvi was an extraordinary, exceptional and intellectually superior child.
It has been claimed that at the age of three years, she learnt about the capital of Indian States/UTs and neighbourhood countries and to this effect her first video was uploaded on YouTube by her father.
In the year 2019, she was having knowledge of the solar system and the National Flag, important days, Districts of H.P., largest and longest in India.
Further in the year 2020, Kashvi was having knowledge about the National Parks of India, 50 most important irregular forms of verbs, regular and irregular forms of verbs, India and world Organizations, rivers and world GK, UTs new folk and classical dances and ITO GK series for class V, VI, VII, and these videos are available on the internet and are being viewed and liked by numerous people.
In 2021, her father earlier also filed a writ petition on her behalf seeking direction to permit Kashvi to appear in SOS 8th class examination as a special case after relaxing age criteria.
The Principal of Kashvi’s school appeared before the Court and acknowledged the fact that she was an exceptional child as compared to other children of her age. He, however, expressed concern that permitting her to appear in the class VIII examination would amount to putting her to tremendous pressure and that as an educationist, he would not favour the prayer made by her parents on behalf of their minor child. The Division Bench of this High Court agrees with the Principal.
On the direction of the High Court, a Medical Board consisting of three experts from the Specialty, constituted by the Principal of Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital, Shimla conducted Kashvi’s IQ level test on March 4 and assessed her average IQ as 128.
The Court observed that they are deeply conscious of the situation that a child of such tender age, as Kashvi is, might face a lot of peer pressure, emotional and physical stress in future in case she is permitted to undertake class VIII examination at this stage.
“There would be many such eventualities which Kashvi may face in future on account of her accelerated jumps at a tender age of eight years which she and her parents might not even visualize today,” said the court.
However, the court further observed that they are also aware of the fact that Kashvi may be a genius and intellectually superior child as is claimed in the petition.
Taking stock of every material aspect, the Court doesn’t deem it appropriate to permit Kashvi to straightaway undertake the final examination of class 8. However, to balance the scales and to see her overall progress, the Court directed the respondents to provisionally admit Kashvi as a day scholar in class VIII.
The Court further ordered that in case Kashvi takes provisional admission as a day scholar in class VIII then her overall progress shall be monitored on regular basis by the concerned school authorities.
She has been allowed to provisionally appear in all the class tests, term examinations and all related school activities.
The Secretary H.P. Board of School Education and Rainbow Public Senior Secondary School Dharamman, Palampur, have been directed to file their reports regarding overall progress of Kashvi in every field, be it sports, extra-curricular activities, academic as well as her emotional, physical and mental well being, before the next date and further order in the matter shall be passed after seeing the overall progress of the child.
The matter has been posted for April 28.
