RTE admissions: 73,193 seats after Round 1, over 10k still vacant

Ahmedabad: The first round of admissions under the Right to Education (RTE) Act for Class 1 in Gujarat’s private schools concluded with over 73,000 students securing seats, while more than 10,000 seats still remain vacant across the state.

According to official figures released after the extended admission confirmation deadline on Thursday, 73,193 admissions were confirmed against the total 83,687 seats available under the RTE quota. However, 3,832 students who were allotted seats did not complete the confirmation process, while nearly 900 admissions were cancelled due to document discrepancies and technical issues. Officials said a total of 10,485 seats remain vacant statewide, including both unallotted seats and those left vacant after non-confirmation or cancellation of admissions.

The state received 2.42 lakh applications for RTE admissions this year. Of these, 54,588 applications were rejected during scrutiny, while another 2,043 were disqualified due to incomplete documentation or ineligibility, leaving 1.85 lakh valid applications for consideration.

In the first allotment round conducted on May 4, seats were allotted to 77,925 students. However, 5,753 seats could not be allotted because applicants had not selected schools where vacancies existed or due to limited preferences filled during the application process.

Initially, parents were given time until May 12 to confirm admissions, but the deadline was later extended to May 15 to accommodate pending verifications and documentation procedures. Despite the extension, several allotted candidates failed to complete the process, resulting in a sizeable number of vacant seats after the first phase.

Among districts, Ahmedabad recorded the highest number of confirmed admissions, followed by Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot, indicating strong participation in urban centres where private school demand remains high.