Over 67,000 students get RTE seats in state

MUMBAI: More than 67,000 students in Maharashtra were allotted seats under the 25% Right to Education (RTE) quota, the lottery for which was held on Thursday for the academic year 2021-22. In Mumbai, however, only 4,985 of the 12,911 applicants were allotted seats in schools under the quota. There are 6,463 RTE seats across various schools in the city.

The education department of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) conducted a lottery for admission to various schools in the city under RTE quota on Thursday.

The civic body also held a separate lottery for admissions to 10 newly opened Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and ICSE schools on Thursday and Friday and allotted seats to 2,730 students. This year, there are a total of 3,760 seats in the 10 CBSE schools run by the civic body, for which it got over 9,000 applications.

The department said while the lottery for admissions has been conducted, dates of confirming admissions will be revised due to the Covid-19 situation and the resultant restrictions. “We shall update parents on the new dates soon. Parents will be called only by appointment and they will get the information via SMS through the verification committee,” said an official from the civic education department.

“Parents can check the dates on the official website under the ‘application wise details’ tab,” said the official. He added the difference between applications and selections is owing to several reasons such as wrongly filled details, selection of schools outside eligible norms etc.

Demand for CBSE schools under BMC was high and the entire lottery process was conducted and streamed online. “We are happy that these schools are getting such a great response,” said Sainath Durge, member of BMC education committee.