Mumbai: After as many as 26,862 seats under the Right To Education (RTE) quota remained vacant after four rounds of admissions under the scheme that aims to ensure 25% of students from marginalised sections of free admission upto class 8 in private unaided schools, parents and activists blamed the state government of “deliberately delaying admission process” for the massive increase in the number.
The delay this year in starting the RTE admission process was owed to a court case following the state government’s amendment of the RTE act which stated the students from marginalised class who reside within one kilometre radius of the school will only be eligible for free admission under the scheme. The Bombay High Court later stayed the amendment and the admission process and the admission process for RTE students began only on July 23.
“These delays are being caused deliberately to ensure more number of RTE seats remain vacant. Last year, they came up with making Aadhar Card mandatory for RTE admissions and that had delayed the process in 2023-24. This year, even after knowing that their amendment will not stand in courts, they came up with it just to delay the process again,” said Nitin Dalvi, Mumbai region president of Maharashtra State Student-Parent Teacher Federation (MSSPTF). “What the delay ensures is that worried parents opt for normal admissions after spending an extreme amount of money and these schools benefit as those seats become normal seats for them and they charge a hefty amount to fill them up,” Dalvi added.
“It should be ensured that more than 26,000 students don’t suffer because of these deliberate delays and a system for the next academic year where the RTE admission process is completed by May should be put in place to ensure thousands of seats don’t remain vacant in 2025-26 as well,” Dalvi demanded.
“It is a quid-pro-quo between the government and the private schools,” alleged Prasad Tulaskar, an education activist. “Government pays a mere 18,000 rupees for the 25% students enrolled under RTE and the schools charge around 30-50,000 for one seat. The private schools don’t want these seats to be filled and hence they, in connivance with the government, come up with one reason or another to ensure that admissions under RTE are delayed and more beneficiary students are forced to take admission through the normal route. It is happening almost every year now,” Tulaskar further alleged.
Last year, after learning that thousands of RTE seats remained vacant in schools, the Maharashtra State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (MSCPCR) had questioned the state government over the delay in the admission process for socio-economically marginalised students in private schools. In a letter to the state director of education (primary), the child rights body had also asked for the directorate’s plans for 2024-’25.
This year in Maharashtra, 1,05,238 seats were available across 9,217 schools for admissions under the RTE Act, according to the government’s official website. However, only 78,376 students (out of 2,42,516 total applicants) have confirmed their admissions after four rounds of seat allotment. In 2023-24, the state had received a record 3.64 lakh applications for around 1.02 lakh seats reserved for marginalised students. However, only 94,700 of these applicants were selected, with only 82,879 eventually getting seats of their choice.
