Amid ongoing school admissions under the Right To Education (RTE) Act, a new issue with the online-system has come to the fore as a parent has alleged losing out on an allotted seat due to system error. A Dadar resident, Amit Jadhav, applied for his son's admission to school under RTE, and was allotted a seat in a Dadar school via the lottery system. But when he went to confirm the admission, Jadhav was told it could not be done as the system shows his name as a student (admitted under RTE) in a Wadala school. In 2019-20, Jadhav’s son was allotted a seat under RTE in a school in Wadala. “We decided not to confirm the admission as it was a long distance from home. Soon after, we shifted to Thane and my son completed pre-primary in a local school there. Now we are back in Dadar, and so I applied for his admission under RTE in nearby schools. But , now that the school is allotted, we are told the system is not confirming the admission because the name is already registered in the Wadala school. How was my application accepted by the system then?” said Jadhav. He said this was the second consecutive year the same issue had arisen. Jadhav said, “Last year, too, I had applied for my son's admission to a Dadar school under RTE. A school was subsequently allotted, but due to the same error, we were denied admission. I had approached BMC which conducts RTE admissions, but the admission process was over by then. I was told to submit a letter requesting cancellation of the old admission, and then retry next year.” The parent has now approached activist Nitin Dalvi. An official from the BMC education department said, "Once a child is allotted a school in the lottery under RTE, the same name is not given the benefit again. Specifics of this case need to be reviewed."
