The Department of Public Instruction has written to the Central Board of Secondary Education asking for affiliation of one Mysuru and five Bengaluru schools to be cancelled for flouting the RTE, reported Tanu Kulkarni of The Hindu. All of these six schools belong to the National Public School Group.
In accordance with the Right to Education act, each school, private or unaided,has to set aside 25% of its seats for students from disadvantaged sections of society. The Supreme Court had exempted this rule from being applicable to minority institutions. The six schools in question however were allegedly forging fake minority certificates to bypass the reservation clause.
Earlier this month, the Commissioner for Public Instruction had mandated that criminal complaints be filed against schools accused of this violation. This was after the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions had alleged that minority status documents produced by the schools were fake.
Niranjan Aradhya, vice president of Centre for Child and Law had told TNM earlier that forging minority certificates was a common malpractice with linguistic minority schools and religious minority schools.
“More often with linguistic minority schools as the state government has very little control over schools established by people from other states,” he said. He added that one way to curb this was by strengthening and developing state schools.
While an FIR has been filed against the school in Mysuru, Bengaluru police say that they have received the complaint against the five schools, and has been sent for 'legal opinion'. However, no FIR has been registered so far.
Apart from NPS, Mysuru, the NPS schools Bengaluru are in Koramangala, Indiranagar, Rajajinagar, HSR Layout and National Academy for Learning, Basaveshwara Nagar.