Do your job of giving admissions: CBM principal responds to BMC

Vinod Tawde

Education minister Vinod Tawde

It's the usual story after a racket is busted: All parties involved begin playing the blame game. So it's not much of a surprise that after the CBM High School at Antop Hill conducted a sting to reveal a scam that misuses the RTE Act for getting wrongful admissions, the BMC education department has opined that the school headmistress operated beyond her job description by lodging a police complaint against the parents, whereas the school principal has responded that the when they did approach BMC education department, they were shunted out.

Rope in higher authorities
Now, to ensure that the case is taken up at the highest level and discuss the unresponsive attitude of the BMC officers, the school has decided to take the matter right up to education minister Vinod Tawde To that end Rebecca Shine, principal of CBM School, has said, "BMC education department cannot claim that the school has done something wrong. We have done our job of verifying the certificate. We made several attempts to inform the BMC education department about the scam. It was only when we realised that the BMC is not listening to us that we approached the police."

She added, "When on March 20, I sent my staff to the BMC with a written complaint against four parents, one of the executive officers refused to sign the copy of our complaint, told them to not indulge in these affairs and to instead concentrate on our job of giving admissions."

BMC claims
Meanwhile, BMC education officer Mahesh Palkar blamed the school for breaking the rules. "According to the GR, only BMC can verify the documents and take action against parents for abusing the RTE. Schools cannot intervene and directly lodge FIR against the parents." And on the question of asking the school to stay out, Palkar stated, "There is no written complaint. Still if school is claiming that their grievance were not considered, we will investigate the details and take clarification from the accused officer."

However, even as Palkar claims that only the BMC has a right to verify documents, Shinde insists that every application she has received from the BMC for RTE admission clearly mentions that the school is responsible for document verification.