Pune: The education department has ordered a random verification of 10% of RTE admissions in every school to check whether parents submitted false information to secure seats under the 25% quota.Primary education director Sharad Gosavi issued the directive on Thursday following a complaint involving 54 admissions in Khed taluka. A departmental committee found that 14 students did not reside at the addresses submitted during their admission. The department ordered cancellation of their admissions and FIRs against their parents for allegedly providing false information.In June, the education department constituted a committee to look into complaints from a zilla parishad member of Khed taluka which alleged that RTE seats were claimed by parents not belonging to economically and socially weaker sections or by showing addresses different from where they live.Under RTE, admission preference is given first to parents who reside within a 1 km radius of the school, followed by those within 3km, and so on.Gosavi said, “The committee members visited the addresses and checked the documents. They found that parents of 14 students from two schools had falsified their addresses. We have told the schools to cancel their admission and told the local education officer to file an FIR against the parents.”For the academic year 2026-27, a total of 2.89 lakh applications were received against a seat vacancy of 1.14 lakh across the state in 8,701 schools. Of these, 1.35 lakh were selected and 96,929 students confirmed their admission.A similar case came to light in Mulshi last year, where 18 parents showed false rent agreements to gain admission to schools in a one km radius of their residence. Similar action was taken then too.Gosavi said that the 10% seats reserved across the state for RTE will be randomly checked by a taluka-level committee. “Our instructions are to keep the committee members different from the ones involved in the admission process so that there is no conflict of interest or bias during the inspections and the report is fair. They will submit the report by Sept 11.”
