Petition before SC seeks 2nd chance for 86K rejected RTE applications

Says online documents did not match with physical copies

A special leave petition has been filed in the Supreme Court over the rejection of 86,514 applications seeking admission under the Right to Education (RTE) quota. The SLP has also sought a second chance for RTE admissions to the 86,514 applicants in the academic year, 2017-18. The High Court had dismissed the PIL filed by Janaadhikaara Sangharsha Parishath (JSP), an NGO, on June 8, 2016. 

JSP had sought a judicial enquiry into the “blunders” of the Department of Public Instruction during verification and rectification of RTE applications.

The petitioners contended before the Supreme Court that the mandatory online process had ruled out the option of clarifying objections in online forms. This was because the documents uploaded on the software did not match with the physical copy available and resulted in arbitrary rejection of “copious amounts of applications”.

The department, in May 2016, had stated that 2.74 lakh applications were received, of which 138 lakh were found to be correct. However, the parents were informed about incorrect applications through short messaging service and were accorded an opportunity to rectify these defects on the same day the list of eligible applicants was published. The petition claimed that several applications were rejected due to incorrect data present in the software used for verification.

“Several applications which were otherwise eligible to participate in the lottery, were not considered. The applicants with caste certificate of the previous year, were declared ineligible due to a fault in the software which led to non-recognition of certificates prior to 2016. A total of 34,027 applicants were rejected on the grounds of ‘invalid caste certificate’,’’ the petition had stated.

A total of 21,518 applicants were rejected despite having produced valid election ID or Aadhaar card as address proof because the software database did not match with the physical document. In addition to these, 29,856 applications were rejected as duplicate applications whereas several duplicate applications appear on the eligible list. As many as 1,113 applications were rejected with the mere statement: ‘Rejected by BEO’,’’ the petitioner had said.