Make family ID cards optional for admission in new session in Haryana: Schools

GURGAON: Citing technical glitches and the necessity to get an OTP, a section of private schools has opposed new admission norms that make it compulsory to upload every family’s Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) on the Haryana education department’s online portal.
As the new academic session is set to begin in April, private schools said they are worried about the new norms mandated by the state government to induct students. Schools, now, have to use family IDs or PPP to enrol new students on the government’s management information system (MIS) portal.
Schools have demanded that the process should be made optional as it is marred by technical glitches and the process is easier said than done. They said their representatives will meet government officials in the coming week for talks. If discussions don’t yield results, they said, they will challenge the norm in the Punjab and Haryana high court.
“Previously, the government had mandated the use of Aadhaar card details. But since last year, the government has been pushing for the use of PPP details as well to admit new students and register them on the MIS portal. Firstly, the coverage of PPP is still limited. Additionally, the process is not feasible. Thus, we demand that the government should make Aadhaar mandatory while PPP should remain optional,” said Yashpal Yadav, state president of Haryana Shikshan Sansthan Sangathan.
“MIS generates OTP while uploading PPP. Since these OTPs are sent to the registered number of the parents, we reach out to them to share that with us. But most of the parents refuse to share the OTP owing to the risks of cyber fraud. Even after requesting and trying to explain the new norms to them, parents aren’t convinced and argue that when the government advised them to not share their OTP with anybody why would it come up with such a rule,” explained Anil Kaushik, president of progressive private schools association.
The education department, on its part, says that they are working to fix the technical glitches.
It also maintained that the schools should register the students at the time of admission itself.
“If they register the students at the time of admissions and inform the parents about the same, there shouldn’t be any problem. The issues of technical glitches and other portal-related problems are being looked into,” said a senior education department official.
“None of the portals, including the MIS, are functional throughout the year. The server remains down almost every time we try to upload information. Moreover, another issue is that of out-of-state students. For instance, the family id of Rajasthan has 16 digits and the one in Haryana has about 12. So, these students fail to get registered on the portal,” Kaushik added.