The education department seems to have rubbed the wrong side of chief minister BS Yeddyurappa as the delay in implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act invited strict instructions from his office on Thursday to primary and secondary education minister Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri and labour minister BN Bachche Gowda, to expedite the process of making the law functional in the state.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

A letter signed by S Dayashankar, the additional secretary and private secretary to chief minister, instructed both the state education and labour ministers to take necessary steps to implement the Act from this academic year (2011-2012).

The letter stated that instructions had been sent as directed by the chief minister. “It is a positive step from the chief minister’s office. We hope the RTE Act will be implemented from this academic year,” said P Lakshapathy, executive director of Association for Promoting Social Action, a non-governmental organisation, working for child rights.

The RTE Act, which is also known as Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, has come into force from April 1, 2010. However, the Act is yet to be implemented in Karnataka.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the nodal agency to implement RTE, recently submitted the final version of the draft rules to the education department. SSA took nearly six months of consultation with various stakeholders before submitting the final version of the draft rules. Now, the draft rules will be further looked into by law and finance departments.

Thereafter, the state government will again ask various stakeholders to provide their opinions and suggestions before finally making the RTE Act, the rule of the land.

The procedural delay has caused widespread doubts among various stakeholders as to whether the RTE Act will be implemented from this academic year at all.

The delay also led to hunger strikes and protests by education rights activists across the state.

Activists alleged that the government was delaying the entire process as it was not committed to the education of poor children and because lawmakers had succumbed to the pressure of powerful private school lobby, which had vested interest in delaying the implementation of the Act.

The Act states that all schools should set aside 25% of the seats for the children from the neighbourhood, a euphemism for kids from the underprivileged sections of society. Earlier in 2010, a raging debate regarding the role of private schools in helping the cause of education of underprivileged children was sparked off by a circular sent by Bethany High School in Koramangala to parents of its students with the underlying tone being against the RTE Act.