The State government on Monday told the High Court of Karnataka that there will be no selection of any children for admission to private schools under the RTE quota till the completion of “physical verification” of all documents, which were submitted along with the applications that were rejected in the online verification process.
A submission was made before a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Subhro Kamal Mukherjee and Justice Ravi Malimath during the hearing of a PIL, which had alleged that loopholes in the online verification process had led to rejection of 86,154 applications for no fault of the parents of eligible children.
Government counsel also told the Bench that following receipt of several complaints about the online verification process, a circular was issued on May 23 asking the Department of Public Instruction to carry out physical verification of documents instead of relying on the outcome of the online process in case of discrepancies.
The department had rejected 86,154 applications for want of insufficient particulars on the documents such as caste and income certificates, and Aadhaar and voter identity cards. It had completed the first round of selection and was set to hold the second one shortly.
Petitioner Adarsh R. Iyer, co-president of Janaadhikaara Sangharsha Parishat, Bengaluru, had alleged that the rejection of applications was mainly owing to faulty technical and citizen unfriendly online process. The Bench adjourned further hearing as government counsel said that details would be submitted after ascertaining the outcome of the physical verification process.
