Shridhar Salunke, Director of Primary and Secondary Education, said on Monday that the decision was taken in keeping with the provision in the Act.

“The RTE Act says the quota admissions in private schools should be monitored by the Education Officer of the Primary Education Department of Zilla Parishad. From this year, the EWS quota admissions in private schools within the city limits and outside will be monitored by the education department of the ZP and not by PMC education department,” Salunke said.

Last year, RTE admissions in the city were supervised by the PMC education department while ZP was responsible for schools in the districtoutside the city limits.

Also, the implementation of the EWS quota in the city had not gone down well with parents and education activists with the PMC education department receiving several complaints about schools refusing to admit their wards under the RTE quota for underprivileged children.

Despite repeated warnings from the department, 128 private schools had not registered a single EWS student by July 1.

A PMC education department official said it was a “sensible move” to hand over the monitoring authority to ZP as it was responsible for release of reimbursement funds as to the private schools for admitting the students under the EWS quota. Activists, however, doubt if ZP will solely be capable of monitoring all the schools in the districts.

Mateen Muzawar, president of Shikshan Hakka Manch, said instead of handing over the the responsibility of implementing RTE to any single body, it should be given to education departments of both ZP and PMC.