The Congress government in Rajasthan has lifted the moratorium on reimbursement of fees to private schools for admission of students under the Right to Education Act and approved the release of 25% of the budget withheld earlier. Most of the schools were closed after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The Finance Department had stopped RTE entitlements for about 50,000 private schools on the grounds of their closure because of which the bills could not be cleared. The dues to be paid to private schools amount to a whopping ₹300 crore. Free admissions are given to the students aged five to seven years, belonging to the financially underprivileged families under the RTE Act. Private schools had earlier threatened that they would not give admissions this year unless their dues were cleared. Official sources said here on Friday that the verification of online teaching and distribution of textbooks during the pandemic would be carried out on a random basis. Since this will take some time, the Finance Department has approved a proposal to pay 25% of the amount to the schools for 2020-21. This will be adjusted against the last payable amount in the current financial year.
