Gujarat government misleading on schools audits: Amit Panchal

Members of Vali Swaraj Manch have alleged that the state government was misleading them in terms of making audit reports of schools available. Parents' association of individual schools, with the help of Vali Swaraj Manch, had sought audit reports and inspection reports of various schools through an RTI application, filed in March. However, when they did not get a reply for a month, they filed an appeal.

Speaking about the same, Amit Panchal, member of Vali Swaraj Manch said: "In a reply, they have stated that making audit reports available is a difficult task and have assured to make inspection reports available within 15 days. This is just misleading us. In their reply, they have stated that the audit report is not available with them. How is it possible that the report is not with the government? We will now wait for 15 days and after that will decide on further course of action."

Fed up of the delay in implementation of Gujarat Self-Financed Schools (Regulation of Fee) Act, parents association of individual schools had filed the RTI application.

Panchal said that since the fee regulatory committee would decide on the fee based on audit reports, they had wished to go through the same for reference. "If the schools have clean reports, they should not mind sharing those. Audit reports as per rules are public reports and it will give us a clear picture of where the fees is being spent," he said.