Gujarat: No school for thousands of kids?

Gujarat government on Tuesday said the question of declaring the second round of admissions under Right to Education (RTE) does not arise as there were no seats left in any school in the state.

The public prosecutor said this in connection with a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by one Chandravadan Dhruv, seeking directions from the court to the state that the second round of admission under RTE for 45,532 students be started on priority.

The government said it was impossible to give admission to over 45,000 students under RTE as all the available seats had been declared filled in the first round itself.

The petitioner argued that the government cannot wash its hands of the responsibility as it was the government's duty to ensure that students from the economically weaker section were given admission under RTE. The petitioner argued that government earlier said it would declare the second round of admissions for the over 45,000 students who were left out.

Further hearing has been scheduled for Monday. The petition filed on Wednesday stated that the second round of allotment will begin on June 2. However, it was yet to happen even as schools had already resumed classes on June 11. The petition stated that the state government began inviting application under the RTE from April 9, 2018, for this year. As per the official website of the Gujarat government, it had received 1,87,660 applications under RTE of which 1,25,922 applications were granted. Among the total accepted applications, 80,199 applicants were allotted schools under RTE in the first round of application.