Chennai, May 21: The Tamil Nadu State government is yet to receive over ₹400 crore from the Centre to carry out admissions under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 in the upcoming academic session. The last date to apply in schools for admissions under RTE in the State was May 18th.
Funds requested for pre-school admissions, Centre insists pre-school admission cost to be borne by State government
The State government has requested for the requisite funds for pre-school education, as per Section 12 (1) (c) of the Act, the Centre has been insisting that the State government must bear the cost of pre-school admissions. There has been no favourable response from the Centre in this matter despite the State taking up the issue on various occasions.
The Hindu reported that as per a senior official, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami had raised the matter in his memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi back in February 2017, but it is yet to be addressed. The memorandum had clearly stated that despite the provision in the RTE Act (Section 12 (1) (c)) covering pre-school education, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) was placing the “entire burden of reimbursement of fees for 2013-14 and 2014-15 on the State government is contrary to law”.
State government states that Section 12 of the RTE Act covers pre-school education but Centre is placing entire burden on state
The State government had released a reimbursement of ₹97 crore for admissions under the RTE Act during the 2013-14 and 2014-15 sessions. The same was claimed under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan but only ₹18 lakh was approved by the MHRD. The State government would have to be reimbursed a total sum of ₹407 crore for 3,28,910 students under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
A senior official said: “Our State government is only asking what we are entitled to under the Act. As per Section 7 of the Act, both the Centre and the State governments have concurrent responsibility to provide funds to carry out the scheme.”
Tamil Nadu Schools received over 1.19 lakh applications this year for admissions in private schools under the RTE Act. The intake capacity this year for entry-level seats in all private schools in the State was around 1.21 lakh seats.