160 B'lore Institutions Denied To Follow RTE Act

The Government has informed the high court that as notified by the Education department, 160 institutions have denied to come under RTE Act. These are the minority institutions in the city.

Other than these 160 institutions others have accepted the rules of RTE act and now that parents can easily apply for benefits in all such schools which follow the RTE rules and regulations.

Earlier, the education department had issued a circular asking these institutions to get a certificate from the tahsildar in order to claim benefits as a minority under RTE. From now on, only those institutions who have registered under the National Commission for Minority Education institutions Act-2004 will get exemption from RTE.

Recently, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), Karnataka has released a list with names and number of schools officially declared minority institutions in each district. Schools denying admissions to students claiming minority status has been a common phenomenon during ongoing admissions under 25 per cent quota of RTE Act.

There are a total of 1,059 minority status schools mentioned in the list of which 160 schools are in Bangalore urban and three are in Bangalore rural.

The highest concentration of minority status schools is in Mangalore with 177 such schools. Madhugiri and Koppal have three and four schools respectively have lowest concentration of such schools.

Minority schools have been exempted from admitting students under RTE act. The DPI had received numerous complaints with regards to schools making false claims of being minority institutions to escape implementing the 25 per cent quota under the act. The problem became so acute that Commissioner of Public Instruction had to issue a circular on January 17, where he warned that schools engaging in such tendencies would be penalised.

The details of notified schools which come under RTE purview are there in the official website of DPI. In a related development concerning free and compulsory education for all, Justice Huluvadi G Ramesh asked regional directors of ICSE and CBSE institutions to appear before the court on February 12th in order to explain their stand on the issue.