Pune: An enquiry committee will examine complaints of bogus admissions under the Right to Education Act’s 25% free seats quota. Director of primary education Sharad Gosavi said the committee will look into the specific complaint and take up a sample survey to rule out any wrongdoing.According to a complaint from Khed taluka in Pune district, some seats were claimed by parents not belonging to economically weaker sections or by showing addresses different from where they stay. Under RTE, during the online admission system, first preference of admission to a school is given to parents who reside within one km radius of the school, followed by 3 km and so on.“A member of Khed Zilla Parishad raised the complaint with the ZP which later came to us. According to him, members who were not eligible for the RTE quota had applied and got their wards admitted in the free seats reserved for socially and economically disadvantaged children. We have formed a committee and sought all the documents. The members of the committee will visit the addresses and verify the documents submitted by the parents. Secondly, they will also conduct a sample survey to rule out any wrongdoing on the part of parents who have confirmed admissions of their wards in different schools,” Gosavi said.For the academic year 2026-27, a total of 2.89 lakh applications were received. Of these, 1.05 lakh were selected. While over 79,000 students confirmed their admissions in the first round, the first waiting list of over 12,000 students were selected from the first waiting list followed by over 2,000 from the second waiting list. The admission process for the students in third waiting list is underway and will be completed on Friday.Gosavi said that a similar case had come to fore last year in Mulshi were 18 parents were found to have shown wrong rent agreements to gain admission in the schools within a 1km area of their residence. “When an enquiry was conducted by the edu dept, it was found that the parents do not live at the address they submitted and it was a conspiracy by the parents and the owners of the house. The admissions of the students were cancelled and the Mulshi education extension officer filed an FIR against the parents and the owners for submitting wrong data to claim admission reserved for students from weaker sections of society,” said Gosavi.What Do The Rules Say?In Maharashtra, the eligibility for RTE seats is that the child should be from ‘disadvantaged groups’, or ‘weaker sections’.Scheduled class, scheduled tribe, backward class, orphan, migrant and street children, child with special needs, children of divorced women, children of widows fall under disadvantaged groups.Children from castes and communities that are not in the disadvantaged categories but whose parents / guardians have an annual income less than Rs 1 lakh per annum are weaker sections.Applications I 2,89,286 —54,683
