Mumbai, Oct. 23 -- The Bombay High Court has set aside a state order denying a six-year-old underprivileged child admission to a private school under the Right to Education (RTE) Act quota on account of breaching the eligibility rules regarding the distance between home and school. In a ruling expected to have a bearing on school admissions under the RTE, a single-judge bench of justice N J Jamadar observed that a "neighbourhood school" described under the Act cannot be construed in a "rigid and pedantic manner". The court directed Balmohan Vidyamandir (BV) in Dadar to admit the child to Class 1 within a week, saying that a very rigid view on area limits under the RTE would "impinge upon the constitutional right of free and compulsory education". In a metropolis like Mumbai, the court said, the state "could not have applied the barometer of distance.with exactitude," especially when the chances of the child securing admission in any other private unaided school had diminished. The court was hearing a petition filed by Karuna Kamble, a 38-year-old resident of the BDD Chawl in Worli. Kamble had challenged a decision by the Deputy Director of Education (DDE), Mumbai Region, in August to cancel the admission granted to her six-year-old daughter at Balmohan Vidyamandir under the 25% RTE quota for children from economically weaker sections (EWS) because their home was beyond the prescribed distance from the school. The school claimed that Kamble's home was beyond 1 km from the school, thereby breaching the distance rule under the RTE quota. The DDE agreed with the school's decision, prompting Kamble to approach the high court for relief. In her petition, Kamble said that while two other children whose homes were between 1 km and 3 km from the school were admitted by Balmohan Vidyamandir, the DDE cancelled her daughter's admission on the basis of an education inspector's report stating that her home was 4 km from the school. The state argued that its decision was in line with the rules under the RTE Act. Justice Jamadar said that rules framed by different states under the RTE laid down distance criteria based on population density, literacy levels, and the need for a school. "In an era of time-space compression, the distance ceases to be an absolute inhibiting factor. Time is said to be the greatest distance between two places. In a metropolis like Mumbai, the concept of distance becomes even more relative," the judge added....