'Survey on school bags misleading'

MUMBAI: After a recent education department survey showed that 99% of children in government schools carry bags within permissible limits, an activist is undertaking a statewide survey to counter the government's claim. Swati Patil, who has an ongoing petition in Bombay high court regarding school bags, alleged that the government survey was flawed and did not present ground realities.
The department last week released the survey that only around 5,000 students had satchels over the prescribed limit. The survey covered 4.17 lakh students in over 23,000 government, corporation and zilla parishad schools from August till October. It established that 98.77% students had school bags as per the prescribed limit, while 1.23% had overweight satchels.
Activists contested the government claims. "The government conducted the survey in October when most children don't carry a full timetable as they have exams. We will check schools in Mumbai, Aurangabad and Sangli to show the government what the real bag weighs," Patil said.