Kohlhapur: The district primary education department only registered a meagre 400 applications by May 6 for over 3,000 seats made available for children under the Right To Education Act.

District primary education officer Subhash Chougule, told TOI that they do not understand why they are witnessing such a bad response, “We had to extend the admissions this year twice already in past one month, however, the number of applications have not increased by much. This is one of the lowest responses to the RTE admissions we have got in recent years”.

Chougule added that the department is continuing with the admissions and the interested parents still can apply for admission in any of the eligible schools.

Another official from the education department said that the the introduction of the online admissions system for the first time is most likely the reason behind the lower response.

“Many parents are still not accustomed to the online admission system. They are used to the conventional mind set of the admissions, where a parent has to go to the school to manually enroll the child. The problem is more acute in remote and rural areas,” said the office.

He said assistance was provided for parents in almost all the eligible schools but it did not improve the situation.