Express News Service By

BENGALURU:The state Department of Public Instruction is planning to allot Right to Education (RTE) seats through an online lottery process.

According to sources in the department, a software is ready and officials are awaiting a nod from the authorities. A demonstration of the software will be shown to senior officials at a meeting on Wednesday.

“Initially, there were some technical glitches. After two days, everything was sorted out and even parents did not face much problems. To allot seats in a most transparent manner, we have decided to go for the online lottery process,” said a senior official of the department.

Sources said the online lottery for allotment of RTE seats will be similar to the seat allotment system followed by Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) for allotting under-graduate seats to professional courses. “We have to decide whether the seat allotment will be school-wise, block-wise, taluk-wise, district-wise or state-wide. Once this is decided and the demo is approved by higher authorities, we will announce the dates,” said the official.

The technical staff of the department are suggesting the online lottery system be decentralised to avoid rush. According to the schedule released by the department, the lottery process was supposed to be completed by February 28.

The officials assured that there will be no problems with the online lottery system as the applications will be cross-verified at the Block Education Officer (BEO) level.

“If there are applications with fake documents, then they will be verified and rejected by the BEO itself. For the online lottery system, we have created three slabs -- for those with an annual income below Rs 1 lakh, second is below Rs 2 lakh and the third is below Rs 3.5 lakh. There is no question of injustice to any of the applicants as the system itself will pick the eligible applications,” stated an offficial.

According to statistics available from the department, over 3.89 lakh applications have been received for 1.10 lakh RTE seats available across the state.

The highest number of RTE seats are available in Bengaluru South with 17,405 followed by Bengaluru North with 11,988.

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