Each Mumbai college will be inspected: Education dept

Saraswati Hindi High School, Mulund, has five classrooms for all students. Pic/Rajesh Gupta

A day after mid-day exposed junior colleges that lack proper infrastructure to teach students and yet participated in the latest centralised online admission process, the education department on Tuesday decided to inspect every single institution in the city. The deputy director of education told mid-day that the inspection was long pending, as the education department's regular tasks could not be undertaken due to staff crunch first and then Covid-19.

This is indeed a serious issue and the department will definitely look into this. There are two aspects of this problem and we have to deal with it with minute planning," Deputy Director of Education, Mumbai, Sandeep Sangave, told mid-day. He said the education department will check whether the colleges have the infrastructure to cater to the students they have enrolled and examine their condition. Officials will also check the strength of teachers and their qualifications, as well as the number of students.

Also read: Mumbai: These ghost colleges admit students, but don't exist

DVM High School and Junior College, Kandivli, runs out of a small space here. Pic/Nimesh Dave

mid-day, on November 14, reported about the ghost colleges that were either functioning out of small establishments in slums and commercial buildings or their registered address now had other shops instead. During visits, mid-day found that Rao Junior College had four institutions, including one registered in Sion where there is an eatery now, and another in Kharghar that is shut.

Sangave said colleges, which participate in the admission process, shared their address with the department's head office in Pune while registering, but these haven't been revised for a while. "If the colleges that don't even exist and are still participating in the admission process need to be verified and removed from the list as they may indulge in some racket," he added.

The registered address of Rao Junior College in Sion is the same as that of this eatery. Pic/Rajesh Gupta

"As far as Rao Junior College is concerned, the management has been fined earlier and we will check the status of their colleges again," he assured. On junior colleges that are functioning from slums and commercial establishments, he said, "We will rigorously carry out the inspection of educational institutions, which has been long pending. The regular activities of the education department were not undertaken for a while; first due to staff crunch and then the COVID-19 pandemic." The inspections would be undertaken with the help of the education officer, the education inspector and other officers to weed out ghost colleges, he added.

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Capacity of Rao College, Sion, where an eatery stands instead