Delhi changed its primary education allocation system on Monday. Officials used encrypted Aadhaar verification to run the annual computerized draw for economically disadvantaged students. The national mandate forces private institutions to integrate marginalized communities.
The 2026-27 academic lottery assigned a record 55,701 entry-level seats. The pool covers 2,308 private, unaided schools across the Indian capital.
Seat availability jumped significantly this year. The Directorate of Education (DoE) stated total reserved seats under the Economically Weaker Sections/Disadvantaged Groups (EWS/DG) and Children With Special Needs (CWSN) categories rose from 50,516 to 55,701. This adds over 5,000 new slots to the system.
The software processed 139,524 total applications. Evaluators marked 138,536 EWS/DG entries and 988 CWSN applications as strictly complete, according to a detailed report published Monday.
Education Minister Ashish Sood said the next phase of the admission pipeline will start within three days. School allotments generate automatically. This lottery enforces Section 12(1)(c) of India’s Right to Education (RTE) Act. The statute legally binds all non-minority private schools to reserve at least 25% of their entry-level nursery, kindergarten, and Class 1 capacity for disadvantaged students.
How Aadhaar Encryption and Mobile Verification Reshape Delhi’s Admission Integrity
This year’s allocation breaks from past rules. The DoE used entirely new software built by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to run the draw.
The system uses strict encrypted Aadhaar-based verification. This directly targets duplicate applications and systemic fraud that historically plagued the entry-level allocation process. The software locks each student to a unique identifier to guarantee a transparent distribution of the expanded seat pool.
The change also affects parents navigating the post-draw bureaucracy. The DoE started a new government policy allowing completely digital verification of documents directly via mobile phones. This ends the historical requirement for families to make repeated physical visits to allotted schools to prove their eligibility, saving working-class families from losing necessary daily wages.