Over 60 per cent seats, meant for the poor in private schools, go abegging

Around 60 per cent seats reserved by law for underprivileged children in private unaided schools were left unused in the last academic year (2019-20) in seven Jharkhand districts, including Ranchi, the state education department has revealed in reply to Right to Information (RTI) query.

On Saturday, Association for Parivartan of Nation, the NGO that filed the RTI application, released details of the findings pertaining to seven districts, namely Ranchi, West Singbhum, East Singbhum, Bokaro, Godda, Seraikela-Kharsawan and Garhwa.

“The seven districts have 184 schools with 3,541 seats in all. Of the 3,548 applications received from families of underprivileged children [under Section 12 (1) (c) of Right to Education Act] only 1,471 was approved. As a result, 2015 seats remained vacant, which is 60 per cent, and this after 10 years of this significant act coming into force,” said Hasan Al-Banna, president of the NGO.

In Ranchi, 74 per cent seats were vacant. “As many as 1,679 applications were filed for admission under RTE of which only 188 were approved. This means out of 713 seats, 525 remained vacant,” said Kareem Ansari, a member of the outfit.

Similarly, in East Singhbhum 820 out of 1,651 seats remained vacant while in West Singhbhum 102 remained unused out of 189 seats. Out of 608 seats in Bokaro, 418 remained vacant. Garhwa, Seraikela and Godda had 55, 112 and 38 vacant seats out of 158, 153 and 69 seats respectively.

“Interestingly, the government received more applications than the number of seats. For the 3,383 seats available in private schools, 3,578 applications were filed. However, the government rejected 62% of these applications. Many eligible families who had pinned their hopes on securing admission for their family were sorely disappointed to find that their applications were rejected without reason,” said Hasan.