PIL says over 45k students left in limbo as state yet to start second round of admissions
A petition filed before the division bench of Gujarat High Court, headed by Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy, has sought that the second round of admissions under Right to Education (RTE) be declared at the soonest in the state.
The petitioner, Chandravadan Dhruv, said that 45,532 students were yet to be allotted a school under the RTE, as the second round of admissions has not begun yet.
The petitioner argued that the second round of allotment was to begin on June 2, 2018, but has been delayed as schools across the state reopened on June 11.
The division bench has asked the government to file its reply by Thursday as to why it has so far not allotted schools to over 45,000 students.
The petitioner has also sought that the 3,170 applicants whose applications under RTE were rejected be allowed to file a fresh application as many were rejected on grounds of typo errors or invalid documents.
The petition stated that the state government started taking applications under RTE from April 9 for this year. Under the RTE Act, students from economically weaker sections of the society are entitled to free education and 25 per cent of seats in private and government schools have to be reserved for them.
The petition further stated that as per Gujarat government's official website, it had received 1,87,660 applications under RTE, of which 1,25,922 applications were granted. It further stated that of the 61,738 applications (difference between received application and granted application), 3,170 applications were rejected.
The petition states that the state government has not bothered to clarify what happened to the remaining 58,568 RTE applications — this, as per the petition, needs to be investigated.
Among the total accepted applications, 80,199 applicants were allotted to schools under RTE in the first round of application. The petition alleges that many students who were allotted schools are yet to get admission, as the schools rejected them on myriad grounds.
PROVISIONS OF RTE
Under the RTE Act, students from economically weaker sections of the society are entitled to free education and 25 per cent of seats in private and government schools have to be reserved for them.
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