Edu dept’s portal for school permits yet to go online

If there is an existing school that wants to get its higher classes sanctioned before the new academic year, we cannot hold them as it would affect students already studying the school. OFFICIAL, Education department

Mumbai:

A year after the state education department announced it would sanction approvals to new schools online, it is yet to come up with an online portal for the process. The new portal is now expected to be up by the end of November.

In October 2017, the education department had declared that the entire process of sanctioning new schools will be on a digital portal. The move promised to bring in more transparency and ease in the process of sanctions, which until now is conducted offline.

After the decision, it was declared that the government would consider proposals that come in only through the portal and would not accept any proposals offline.

The delay in the creation of portal has affected the process of approval for new schools. “We are in the process of setting up a single window online system for approval of new schools. The idea is to build a comprehensive portal where everything from proposals to obtaining no objection certificates (NOCS) would be online. It’s a major project and is thus taking some time,” said a senior official from the state education department.

The official, however, added that the government is accepting proposals if they are of ‘urgent nature’. Applicants said that the government was putting them in a lurch by delaying the work on the portal.

“On the one hand, some schools are getting approved even after submitting documents offline, while on the other those wanting to apply through the proper channel are not able to do so,” said an interested applicant.

Some applicants said with the status of their applications uncertain, they did not know how long to wait for. “We were told the application file will be taken only after the online system begins. However, our documents were accepted by the officials offline. They asked us to formally apply once the portal is up,” An applicant said.

The state is also considering ways to integrate NOCS and permissions from various bodies like the boards and the civic body into the portal. “With the portal, applicants would not have to go anywhere physically to get a document” added the official.