UBT-Controlled BMC’s ‘Ghost Students’ Scam: How 53,000 Children Vanished from Mumbai’s Schools
13 Jan 2026 12:50:08
-Kartik Lokhande
Often, Mumbai tends to forget what happened yesterday, sparing the perpetrators of systemic cover-ups. One such forgotten episode is the ‘ghost students’ scam that had rattled the UBT Shiv Sena-governed Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in 2016! As Mumbai gears up for the BMC elections, Mumbaikars must be made aware of this scam, so that they do not succumb to the divisive agenda of emotive politics resorted to by Shiv Sena (UBT).
In 2016, BMC’s internal review revealed that thousands of students enrolled in various medium-specific schools were absent for prolonged periods but continued to be on the register. The shocking disclosure that there were around 53,000 such students raised significant concerns regarding administrative oversight, data integrity, and potential systemic corruption. The then Education Committee member Shivnath Darade had himself visited all the schools and realised that it was not a one-year aberration but a six-year-long pattern, indicating persistent misreporting or negligence. In Darade’s assessment, the actual number of long-absent students could be well over 80,000 if a proper investigation were done.
In October 2015, ‘Maharashtra Times’ had carried a news report regarding students remaining absent for prolonged periods and then followed up in January 2017. Shivnath Darade pursued the Education Department for investigation, but in vain. This raised serious questions about the performance of the BMC’s Education Department, which was deemed to have ‘failed’ in the media reports. The department, sadly, never bothered to cross-check why the overall quality continued to decline and ‘ghost students’ continued to sap the resources, despite allocating crores of rupees for education and implementing various initiatives (viz. free tablets, smart classrooms, digital learning).
The ‘ghost students’ had financial and governance implications as they sapped BMC’s annual provisioning budget for free tablets, textbooks and stationery, school uniforms, and other educational support materials. As BMC allocates resources based on enrolment figures, provisioning for tens of thousands of non-existent or untraceable students could imply substantial financial leakage, raising the suspicion of systemic corruption within the education supply and distribution chain. But this also makes one wonder -- if these students were absent for years, why was their non-attendance neither detected nor acted upon earlier?
A subsequent survey found that many of these ‘ghost students’ no longer resided at the addresses listed in school records, or had likely migrated with their families, or might have enrolled in schools elsewhere in the country. BMC cited that ‘this’ happened due to the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which prohibits schools from removing a child from the register solely for being absent. However, BMC’s Education Department retained thousands of ‘ghost students’ on paper but failed to follow the critical requirement under the same law – of tracing these children, understanding why they had dropped out, and ensuring their return.
While migration is a plausible factor, several ‘Whys’ and ‘How’ remain unanswered -- why the system did not detect non-attendance for years, why teachers and school administrators failed to report mass absenteeism, how address verification failed at such a massive scale, why no follow-up mechanisms existed to track student continuity, why provisioning cycle continued to be sanctioned annually for absent students, and why BMC did not activate its mandatory dropout-tracking mechanisms. These indicate deeper systemic failures.
When the irregularity became public, BMC removed 53,000 names from the attendance rolls. Thus, instead of addressing accountability, an attempt was made to ‘regularize’ the data retroactively and close the matter without a detailed investigation. The silence that followed under the then Shiv Sena-governed BMC could be viewed as an attempt to avoid scrutiny. For nearly 25 years, BMC’s education division, under consistent political influence, has struggled with declining enrolment, falling learning outcomes, and contracting public accountability. The incident may be just one among many irregularities across nearly 25 years of civic mismanagement under (now) Shiv Sena-UBT.
The expanding procurement budgets despite shrinking attendance presented a mismatch that should have triggered audits. Instead, the administrative approvals, vendor clearances, and supply orders continued without scrutiny. BMC schools witnessed a significant drop in student numbers, reflecting a crisis. The absence of a robust response from the BMC administration at the time only deepens suspicion of financial misappropriation and deliberate oversight failure.
There is an urgent need to take steps to change the perceptions that BMC schools offer inferior quality of education, lack proper infrastructure and facilities etc. The situation also underscores the need for improving quality, accountability, and infrastructure to compete with private options. Given the fact that the Shiv Sena-governed BMC tried to cover up ‘ghost students’, it cannot be trusted with the responsibility of these reforms. A larger governance decay within Mumbai’s civic education machinery can be addressed only through change in political control over BMC.
A city that prides itself on its economic might must ask Shiv Sena, which governed BMC for long years: How did it allow 53,000 children to vanish into illusory paperwork? BMC elections offer an opportunity to raise this question, and also to bring about a change of political guard in the richest civic body in the country.
Often, Mumbai tends to forget what happened yesterday, sparing the perpetrators of systemic cover-ups. One such forgotten episode is the ‘ghost students’ scam that had rattled the UBT Shiv Sena-governed Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in 2016! As Mumbai gears up for the BMC elections, Mumbaikars must be made aware of this scam, so that they do not succumb to the divisive agenda of emotive politics resorted to by Shiv Sena (UBT).
In 2016, BMC’s internal review revealed that thousands of students enrolled in various medium-specific schools were absent for prolonged periods but continued to be on the register. The shocking disclosure that there were around 53,000 such students raised significant concerns regarding administrative oversight, data integrity, and potential systemic corruption. The then Education Committee member Shivnath Darade had himself visited all the schools and realised that it was not a one-year aberration but a six-year-long pattern, indicating persistent misreporting or negligence. In Darade’s assessment, the actual number of long-absent students could be well over 80,000 if a proper investigation were done.
In October 2015, ‘Maharashtra Times’ had carried a news report regarding students remaining absent for prolonged periods and then followed up in January 2017. Shivnath Darade pursued the Education Department for investigation, but in vain. This raised serious questions about the performance of the BMC’s Education Department, which was deemed to have ‘failed’ in the media reports. The department, sadly, never bothered to cross-check why the overall quality continued to decline and ‘ghost students’ continued to sap the resources, despite allocating crores of rupees for education and implementing various initiatives (viz. free tablets, smart classrooms, digital learning).
The ‘ghost students’ had financial and governance implications as they sapped BMC’s annual provisioning budget for free tablets, textbooks and stationery, school uniforms, and other educational support materials. As BMC allocates resources based on enrolment figures, provisioning for tens of thousands of non-existent or untraceable students could imply substantial financial leakage, raising the suspicion of systemic corruption within the education supply and distribution chain. But this also makes one wonder -- if these students were absent for years, why was their non-attendance neither detected nor acted upon earlier?
A subsequent survey found that many of these ‘ghost students’ no longer resided at the addresses listed in school records, or had likely migrated with their families, or might have enrolled in schools elsewhere in the country. BMC cited that ‘this’ happened due to the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which prohibits schools from removing a child from the register solely for being absent. However, BMC’s Education Department retained thousands of ‘ghost students’ on paper but failed to follow the critical requirement under the same law – of tracing these children, understanding why they had dropped out, and ensuring their return.
While migration is a plausible factor, several ‘Whys’ and ‘How’ remain unanswered -- why the system did not detect non-attendance for years, why teachers and school administrators failed to report mass absenteeism, how address verification failed at such a massive scale, why no follow-up mechanisms existed to track student continuity, why provisioning cycle continued to be sanctioned annually for absent students, and why BMC did not activate its mandatory dropout-tracking mechanisms. These indicate deeper systemic failures.
When the irregularity became public, BMC removed 53,000 names from the attendance rolls. Thus, instead of addressing accountability, an attempt was made to ‘regularize’ the data retroactively and close the matter without a detailed investigation. The silence that followed under the then Shiv Sena-governed BMC could be viewed as an attempt to avoid scrutiny. For nearly 25 years, BMC’s education division, under consistent political influence, has struggled with declining enrolment, falling learning outcomes, and contracting public accountability. The incident may be just one among many irregularities across nearly 25 years of civic mismanagement under (now) Shiv Sena-UBT.
The expanding procurement budgets despite shrinking attendance presented a mismatch that should have triggered audits. Instead, the administrative approvals, vendor clearances, and supply orders continued without scrutiny. BMC schools witnessed a significant drop in student numbers, reflecting a crisis. The absence of a robust response from the BMC administration at the time only deepens suspicion of financial misappropriation and deliberate oversight failure.
There is an urgent need to take steps to change the perceptions that BMC schools offer inferior quality of education, lack proper infrastructure and facilities etc. The situation also underscores the need for improving quality, accountability, and infrastructure to compete with private options. Given the fact that the Shiv Sena-governed BMC tried to cover up ‘ghost students’, it cannot be trusted with the responsibility of these reforms. A larger governance decay within Mumbai’s civic education machinery can be addressed only through change in political control over BMC.
A city that prides itself on its economic might must ask Shiv Sena, which governed BMC for long years: How did it allow 53,000 children to vanish into illusory paperwork? BMC elections offer an opportunity to raise this question, and also to bring about a change of political guard in the richest civic body in the country.