No birth certificate, so school turns away girl

UNCERTAIN FUTURE: Palak's foster parents want her to be either a doctor or a lawyer.

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Keywords: Birth Certificate, Admission

Surat: A little girl in Surat, who was found abandoned at a garbage dump two years ago, has been denied admission by a school because she doesn't have a birth certificate.

Abandoned when she was a baby, the girl has been brought up by a couple that rescued her from a garbage dump two and a half years ago.

Two-and-a-half year old Palak would love to go to nursery school, but her foster parents - Rekha and Pradip Patel simply cannot find a school that would take her.

Rekha, a domestic help, found the little girl abandoned in a garbage heap on January 14, 2006.

Though impoverished, Rekha and her husband decided to take care of the baby and the couple has high hopes about her.

"I want her to be a doctor or a lawyer. She should serve the society when she becomes big. But we've tried all that we can to get her an admission in school," says Rekha Patel, Palak's mother.

But their dream has so far failed to bear fruit. Palak was never formally adopted, and still doesn't have a birth certificate.

And she is finding it hard to get admission in any school.

"We want to admit the child, but government rules say a birth certificate is a must," Chanchalben Sevaliya, Principal of Nutan Vidya Sankool, says.

For the moment though, Palak's is getting lessons at home from her parents.