15 lakh 'fake' students enrolled in Bihar schools!

Believe it or not! More than 15 lakh students enrolled in government-run schools in Bihar have been found fake as they are missing for months. Most of them were absent without informing the school authorities, officials of education department said on Thursday.

Contrary to Bihar government-led by Nitish Kumar's claims that enrollment in schools had increased in the state in the last six years, the latest findings of 'operation clean register' paint a different picture.

"Inflated enrollment in government-run schools appear to be a reality as hundreds of thousands of students have been found fake as they were absent," an official associated with the 'operation clean register' said.

According to officials, of the 38 districts in the state, 19 reported over 50,000 fake admissions each. In some cases, the figures almost reached one lakh. "Fake admissions in schools will hamper and derail the move to improve quality of the education," officials said.

The district of Patna, Gaya and Nalanda have highest number of missing students.

"Children took admission in more than one school for getting benefits of government-sponsored schemes for mid day meal, school uniform, cycle, scholarship. All these students were found to be studying in different schools but they took admissions in government-run schools for getting benefit of schemes provided by the state government to poor students," the officials added.

The state government had launched several incentive schemes to increase enrollment in the primary and middle level schools.

The education department top brass have asked concerned officials for re-verification of fake admission in schools.

Early this year, it surfaced for the first time that hundreds of students took fake admissions in government run schools.

After that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ordered an inquiry into incidents of fake admissions in schools.

The matter now came to light when the Bihar Educational Quality Mission conducted an inquiry into 3,323 government-run schools spread across 449 blocks. The admissions of large number of 'fake' students have been cancelled following order of the district education officers.

Earlier, opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress and the  Lok Janshakti Party have demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into fake admission racket in the schools.

They said that the large-scale fake enrolments in Bihar's schools in the past five years have posed serious questions on the utilisation of funds from the government's education schemes such as the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan, mid-day meal scheme, and the schemes of free bicycles and uniforms for students.