The Gujarat Education Department has received 96,707 applications this year against 83,326 reserved seats under the Right to Education (RTE) Act’s 25 per cent reservation rule in private schools. As per the data collected till 7 pm Saturday, when the online application process was closed, 7,449 applications were pending while 59,268 were approved. After the application process started on April 10, 11,605 applications have been rejected. A total of 18,385 applications were cancelled, as on April 22, the data showed. Over 83,000 seats are reserved in 9,855 private schools in the state. A majority of these schools are in Gujarati medium. Last year, over 71,000 children were admitted to the schools in the state under the RTE provision. The schedule for admissions will be declared by the department in the coming days. However, the Gujarat Pradesh Youth Congress has demanded an application deadline extension of another 15 days. "Every year, the period to apply is 15-20 days. But this year, it was only 12 days. As a result, there was a lot of congestion on the website and repeated incidents of the website crashing. Also, it takes time for parents to collect the documents required for admission. Keeping all these factors in view, we request you to allow another 15 days to apply,” the Gujarat Pradesh Youth Congress wrote to Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Sunday. Meanwhile, with repeated complaints of agents contacting parents to get their wards admitted and even offering to prepare fake documents, the education department has launched a helpline to file complaints. Recently, the education department filed police complaints against fake websites promising admission under the RTE Act. The first FIR was registered in Gujarat in September 2021 against a beneficiary of the RTE Act for submitting false income certificates and false information to the state government. The student was admitted to Anand Niketan School in Class 1.
