Make audit report public: Petitioners

Education activists in Mumbai and Pune want the ongoing third-party audit reports into first year junior college (FYJC) admissions to be made public. The admission process, which concluded last month, drew flak for not allotting seats on merit.

Over two lakh students in Mumbai region secured admission from June to September. But they complained that they were allotted colleges they did not prefer, even though their scores matched the college cut-offs.

The Bombay high court ordered a third-party audit in response to a PIL filed by NGO Syscom.

Although the HC order said nothing on the report being made public, Syscom said it should be accessible to all.

The petitioners suspect that flawed. “Over 35,000 students were admitted in the quota seats after the deadline to surrender the seats ended,” said Vaishali Bafna, a petitioner. “This means seats that should have been transferred to the open category, were used by colleges to admit reserved category students.”

She added, “The department hasn’t revealed the parameters being checked. We want them to look into every aspect and whether it was justified to charge Rs150 from students for the admissions manual,” she said.

Education officials said Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (Yashada), the state administrative training institute, is conducting the audit. “Yashada will submit the report to the state government. The report will be confidential and will not be released to the public,” said BB Chavan deputy director of edu