CAG raps Centre, states for poor implementation of Right to Education Act

It finds lacunas in financial management, compliance and monitoring of the RTE Act, 2009

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found serious flaws related to financial management and implementation of the Right to Education Act, 2009. The act was enacted to provide free and compulsory education to every child in the 6-to-12-year age group.

“It was noticed that there were lacunae in the financial management of the Act like mismatch of unspent balances at the end of the year with opening balances of succeeding years,” the CAG noted in its audit report, which was laid in Parliament on Friday.

For instance, in 2014-15 the opening balance was Rs 17,280 crore. Add to this Centre, State and other receipts contributed Rs 35,209 crore making the total Rs 52,491 crore. The expenditure was Rs 39,177 crore, which means the remaining balance was Rs 13,314 crore. However, the opening balance for 2015-16 was Rs 14,112 crore.

The CAG pointed that the state government were not utilising the funds meant for the implementation of the Act. However, the unspent balances have come down in the past three years beginning 2013-14. The bigger states such as Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and Karnataka continue to hold large amount of unspent funds.

The CAG in its report noted that states were not fully following the RTE norms. For instance, five states including Bihar, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Meghalaya were not providing the pre-school education as mandated in the section 11 of the Act. Similarly, states such as Assam, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh, Kerala, and Sikkim were detaining the students in the same class, which is a violation of the section 16 of the Act. 

Under RTE Act, no child can be detained or expelled from the school till the completion of elementary education.

The auditor general pointed that the National Advisory Committee (NAC), which should be constituted to advice the Central government on implementation of the provisions of the RTE Act, has not been reconstituted after November 2014.  

The school management committees (SMCs) were also not formed in many schools across the country. For instance, 88 per cent government schools in West Bengal don’t have SMCs.