Vacant RTE seats: Second roundadmissions to continue till Jun 27

Nagpur: Parents whose wards have been selected for school admissions under RTE quota in the second round have time till June 27 to complete the admission formalities.
With almost 50% RTE seats in Nagpur district remaining vacant, authorities are hoping that all selected parents complete the admission process so that the gap can be bridged further. Out of the total 7,204 RTE seats in the district, only 3,714 could be filled.
In the second round, 2,731 students have been offered seats for which the admission deadline is June 27. However, it is almost guaranteed that RTE seats will remain vacant in many schools as majority of the parents try for branded English medium schools. In fact, in Nagpur the applications received were more than 300% of the seats available. But many applications get rejected because of improper address being mentioned or documents not being in order.
There have been many cases of parents ‘shifting’ their residence close to a well known school so that they become eligible for RTE under the distance criteria. In RTE, preference is given to students who reside closest to the school. But many issues related to mapping of address in the online application form also created multiple issues.
NGO RTE Action Committee had filed official objections over the address mapping in the online software as many admissions had been rejected because of this.
Following these issues, the education department formed a verification committee which comprised of its own officials plus other experts. This committee then scrutinizes applications that have been rejected and ensures that it has been done so only due to valid reasons.