Ganesh Mandir and Girinagar in Bengaluru have suddenly become the most sought-after addresses.
Officials have observed a flurry of address changes on Aadhaar cards to the two wards.
They are the wards in BBMP limits where parents are eligible to apply for seats in unaided schools under the RTE quota.
This comes in the backdrop of the State government amending the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) rules. With this, a child can be admitted to a private school under the quota only if there is no government or aided school in the locality. It is mandatory for the child as well as either parent to submit Aadhaar details for a seat under the RTE quota.
Eligible wards
Only two wards meet this criteria. Ward number 165 — Ganesh Mandir — has 10 private unaided schools, three of which have LKG as the entry point while the remaining are for class one.
In ward number 162 — Girinagar — parents can apply to 17 schools, 10 of which offer LKG.
These two wards come under the jurisdiction of the Bengaluru South education district.
Bengaluru South
About 22% of the total applications across the State for a seat under the RTE quota have been filed from Bengaluru South education district.
According to officials, 3,849 of the total 17,784 applications received from across the State are from Bengaluru South.
In order to change address in the Aadhaar card, an applicant has to submit one of the original documents mandated by the Unique Identification Authority of India.
Nagasimha G. Rao, convener of the RTE task force, said, “Some parents may have actually moved to these two wards to get a seat. But there may be many who have fudged documents to get their address changed. This is something that the Department of Public Instruction needs to monitor, and ensure that only genuine candidates get a seat.”
A senior official in the Department of Public Instruction said that they would not be able to check whether the parents had actually moved to these wards.
Although Chikkodi with 1,476 seats has the maximum number of seats available under the RTE quota, only 690 applications have been filed by parents as all these seats are in aided schools. The district does not have a single unaided school. Last year, there were 8,374 applications from this district as unaided schools were under the ambit of the quota.
Uttara Kannada, Madhugiri and Kodaguthere education districts have received less than 25 applications.
While Madhugiri and Uttara Kannada do not have any unaided school, education department officials pointed out that though Kodaguthere has four unaided schools where parents can apply, they have received no application as they are far away from villages or are of poor quality.
