On Wednesday, May 15, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) posted the list of schools in Maharashtra that are now qualified for RTE admission on the RTE portal. It also posted the seats available under RTE in these schools. With this, the state education department will restart the admission procedure under the Right to Education (RTE) Act on Friday, May 17, for the academic year 2024–25.
The process for RTE admissions for this academic year was already delayed and started in April. About 70,000 applications were filed during that time. But the process was suspended after the amendment to the RTE Act was challenged in a high court.
Now, students who had previously registered will need to start the application process again. There are currently about one lakh seats for admission under the RTE category.
In February, the Maharashtra government modified the RTE guidelines. According to the revised regulations, private schools in Maharashtra that are less than a kilometre away from a government or assisted school are not required to offer admission under the RTE quota.
This led to RTE admissions being diverted to government-assisted schools. This increased the seats to 9.5 lakh in 75,000 institutions in the RTE quota.
Later, the change was halted by the Bombay High Court. As a result, the admissions were reversed to their original process. This also reduced the number of seats.
The original process requires that 25% of seats in privately funded and self-financed schools be set aside under the RTE category for applicants from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The government would cover the cost of their education.
Now, there are only 9,138 schools that are offering 1,02,434 seats under the RTE quota for the 2024–2025 academic year. The Aurangabad district has the most schools (573), with 4,441 seats set up for RTE quota students.
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