After BPL rule, pleas drop by nearly 2L under RTE

Jaipur: The state government's move to make RTE admissions for only BPL families has reduced the number of applications by close to two lakh from the last academic session.
The number of applications received by RTE cell was 1.69 lakh forms against 3.46 lakh in the year 2015-16, says state RTE website.
State notification on RTE admissions says that only BPL families are eligible for admission under RTE quota.The ruling is not applicable on SCs and STs social groups. As per the earlier rule, families with annual income of less than Rs 2.50 lakh were eligible for the admissions with no income cap on SCs and STs. Under the rule, as many as of 1.70 lakh students took admissions under RTE quota.
State education department injected the only BPL move after it came to their notice that many families have submitted fake income certificates to take the admission in private schools since 2010-11. "Our inquiry on private schools has put 3000 schools on spot for abusing RTE act. They have inflated the normal admission figures so that they can admit high number of students under RTE quota. The quota says that 25% seats against the total number of admissions under the normal process," said a government officer. Damodar Goyal, president of society for private unaided schools in Rajasthan, said that the eligibility criteria will allow the BPL applicants to be benefited in large numbers. "I am happy that tax payers' money will be utilized properly. We have the information that parents have sought admission on the basis of fabricated income documents. The government should take some measures to verify the correctness of the income documents filed in earlier years," said Goyal.
However, the state notification has been challenged by Abhyutthanam Society and is pending in Rajasthan High Court. The final applications till the last date were 59,000 online and 1.10 lakh offline. The admissions will be based on lottery system scheduled on May 21. The total number of schools was 28,891 participating in the lottery which is around 5,000 schools short of the total private schools in the state. Each applicant was asked to submit names of 10 schools in the order of preference. Interestingly, 10,171 schools were not chosen by any parent leaving them with zero applications.