Op against bogus pupils to help state save 1K cr

Updated on: Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Ever since Rajendra Darda took over the reins of the crisis-ridden school education department, his office was flooded with complaints pertaining to bogus students in aided and unaided private schools in the state. Most of his predecessors had tried to rectify the issue in the past but had failed due to mounting political pressure. But Darda has succeeded in his attempts to check the menace and most likely saved the state exchequer over Rs 1,000 crore and chief minister Prithviraj Chavan now wants him to implement his strategy across the state.

When Darda insisted on specific information regarding the issue, he was told that a large number of schools had bogus students. He then quietly obtained information on bogus students from over a dozen districts and after getting confirmation, held a meeting with chief secretary Ratnakar Gaikwad on the plan of action.

“We decided to begin a pilot project to detect bogus students in Nanded district on August 31,” a senior education official told ToI. A total of 490 teams comprising senior revenue and education department officials and 31flying squads were set up to check 3,475 schools in Nanded.

“Since importing students from neighbouring districts during inspections is a routine practice in some districts, we set up checking squads on the borders of the districts,” the official said. The department also marked the students with indelible’ ink so that no student was checked twice. Officials said that on completion of the project, it was found that of the 7.14 lakh students registered on the rolls, 1.4 lakh were bogus.

Stating that the department anticipates that 15 lakh students of the 2.16 crore students registered across the state may be bogus, the official said the state will ultimately save nearly Rs 1,000 crore from the amount currently spent on school books, uniforms and mid-day meal scheme.

Op against bogus pupils to help state save 1K cr

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