A day before the deadline for filling nursery applications ends, NGOs helping Delhi government with the process are seeing a huge rush of people applying for their wards in the EWS category.

Government sources said the Department of Education is likely to extend the process for admitting students from the Economically Weaker Section (EWS). A circular on this may be issued on Friday.

Since the online system had encountered some problems in the initial days, which were resolved only later, the volunteers are also hoping for an extension of a few more days.
The volunteers say that filling forms for the underprivileged kids is a time-consuming process as there are a lot of discrepancies in their documents. They had earlier urged the government to extend the process to cater to more people. 

“On an average, we are filling 100-150 forms per day. One form takes 45 minutes to one hour as there are many discrepancies in their documents. For example, the birth certificate wrongly identifies the child as female, when he is male. Names of parents are wrongly filled. So, we have to minutely check each and every detail and then submit the form,” volunteer Ritu Arora, working with Pardarshita NGO, told Deccan Herald.

The organisation has two centres – at Sundarnagri and Seemapuri -- to help parents fill up the forms.

“EWS parents need support because they can’t fill details on their own. We still have pendency of at least 150 forms. Even if try and fill those by sitting overnight, more parents will approach tomorrow morning which is the last day,” Arora said.

NGOs like Pardarshita and IndusAction had earlier written to Education Minister Manish Sisodia to extend the deadline to give more time to parents to familiarise themselves with the online system. 

The Education Department had not launched any helpline or centres at the level of district education officers to help the parents who are not tech savvy. An education official said that camps have been set up at the offices of MLAs.

The government had for the first time launched an online centralised system for admissions to EWS category to check malpractices by school management and harassment of parents, but the process was marred by glitches like software flaws.

Also, since the computerised lottery is only for schools recognised under Delhi School Education Act Rules, 1973 and those under RTE Act continue to follow the offline process, confusion prevailed among parents who thought they have a choice between both.

“Since it was made online for the first time, most of the time the server was down. So, spreading accurate information and doing away with the glitches took some time and finally the parents have been able to understand the process. But we need time for filling the forms as more and more parents are coming,” another volunteer said.
“We are hoping that the date is extended.“

The government has so far received around 50,000 online applications against 25,000 seats for nursery admission under the EWS category.