Incidentally, the affidavit comes just two days before the hearing and likely decision on the issue of formal school admission age by the court.

The NGO, Social Jurist, led by Advocate Ashok Agarwal had asked the court to stop the Delhi government from allowing schools in Delhi to take admissions of three-year-old children for Nursery and considering that as the entry level for formal school admissions in Delhi.

In its last hearing on this issue on the December 21, 2011, the High Court had refused to stay the Pre-Nursery admissions of 3+ kids in Delhi, which started on 2nd Jan 2012 amidst lot of confusion and chaos amongst parents.

Many parents had been holding on to the process of buying forms or applying for nursery admissions in Delhi till today, hoping that the Court would rule in favour of setting the entry age in Delhi schools to 4+ and they would have one more year before sending their children to a formal school.

Founder of leading community portal covering Nursery Admissions in Delhi, Rajan Arora said, “The affidavit filed by the Delhi Government has dampened the hopes of a change in age criteria from 3+ to 4+ by the High Court tomorrow, i.e. January 6 2012. After reading the affidavit copy, which we had posted on our portal for all parents to see, parents are reacting very strongly as most of the parents want 4 years to be made the entry level admission age for schools in Delhi and feel that they are being forced to send their kids to a formal school at a young age of 3+ due to current age guidelines for admissions in Delhi schools.”

He further said, “One parent of a three-year-old child, came on our live chat and told me that she not been submitting forms for her child's nursery admissions for this session with the hope that the age criteria would be changed to four plus.

However, now she feels that it might not happen and she does not want to waste another day and would start buying and submitting nursery admission forms from 6th Jan 2012 morning itself, without waiting for the outcome of the court hearing later that day.”

The Nursery admissions process in Delhi started from January 2, 2012 onwards and schools would be issuing forms only till January 16 2012 and with most parents applying in 15 or more schools this year.

One parent wrote, “Well again people who were in false impression of age going up to 4+ for nursery are ditched. What other option do they have now other than adopting different means? Forced intelligent corruption. Jai Hind.”