In a move that would defeat the very purpose of bringing out transparency in the RTE online admission process, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has taken a U-turn by allowing jurisdictional Block Education Officers (BEO) to conduct the fourth round locally through lottery process.
The RTE online system was implemented to weed out corruption in the allotment of seats in private schools under the reservation quota. In this context, the decision to allow BEOs to conduct the fourth round has been criticised by experts.
Worse still, many parents who applied for the seat and failed to obtain it too were unaware of this process.
K. Anand, Director (Primary), DPI, said BEOs were asked to conduct lottery for 3,734 seats and 1,861 admissions were made.
Department officials said the move to conduct the fourth round of lottery process was taken based on the Upalokayukta’s direction to fill vacant seats.
General secretary of RTE Students’ and Parents’ Association, B.N. Yogananda, alleged that BEOs were using this opportunity to allocate seats to parents who had got recommendation letters from elected representatives. “We pointed out several errors in the online system. But they refused to budge and decided to continue with it. Now, after three rounds of conducting the process online, why do they want to allocate seats through lottery process,” he asked. However, department officials said the purpose of allowing BEOs to conduct the lottery system was to help them identify all vacant seats in neighbourhood schools. When asked why the same process could not be adopted through the online system, the officials did not have comments.
