The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has approved setting up of 11 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas in uncovered districts of Chhattisgarh, the Central Government has informed.

The districts are- Narayanpur, Bijapur, Baloda-Bazar, Gariaband, Bemetara, Balod, Mungeli, Sukma, Kondagaon, Balrampur and Surguja. The CCEA chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved opening of one Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) in each of the 62 uncovered districts with an outlay of  Rs .2,871 crore in the country. The expenditure for this purpose during the 12th Plan will be  Rs 109.53 crore with a spill over amount of  Rs 2,761.56 crore from 2017-18 to 2024-25.  These JNVs will provide good quality modern education to the talented children prominently from rural areas.  It is expected that nearly 35,000 students will  be benefitted from these JNVs.

 A full-fledged Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya provide employment to 47 persons and accordingly 62 JNVs will provide direct permanent employment to 2914 individuals.

 As JNVs are residential and co-educational in nature, it is compulsory for all the staff and students to reside in the Vidyalaya campus.  Due to its residential nature, each JNV will generate opportunities to the local vendors for supply of essential commodities such as food, consumables, furniture, teaching material etc. It will also create large opportunity for local service providers such as barber, tailor cobbler, manpower for housekeeping and security services  etc.

 As on date, there are 598 sanctioned JNVs in 576  districts spread across 35 States / Union Territories.  Out of these, 591 are functional.  Each JNV has classes from VI to XII with a sanctioned strength of 80 students per class and total strength of 560 students.  Admissions to JNVs in class VI are done through an entrance examination.   At least 75% of the seats in a district are filled by candidates selected from rural areas of the district. 

Further, reservation of seats in favour of children belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is provided in proportion to their population in the concerned district subject to the condition that in no district such reservation is less than the national reservation percentage (15% for SC and 7.5% for ST).  One third of the total seats are reserved for girls.

Notably, the Chhattisgarh government had recently conveyed to Union Human Resources Minister Prakash Jawadekar that proposals for the opening of schools in insurgency-infested Baster region had been pending  for a long time with the Union Government.

 The message was conveyed by State Forest Minister Mahesh Gagda who met Union Human Resources Minister Prakash Jawadekar in New Delhi recently.

He had requested the Union Minister to sanction 'Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya' and Kendriya Vidyalaya' at remote Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh.

The district adjoins Telangana and Maharsahtra States. It is a very backward and remote district.  The district is insurgency affected and lags in developmental activities.

It may be recalled that the State Government is preparing a master plan to construct 500-seater hostels in all the 85 tribal development blocks during the next three years.

The sanctions are meant for 250-seater hostels for tribal boys and 250-seater hostels for girls. Twenty-eight Development blocks had already been selected for the purpose. The hostels will provide accommodation to about 42,000 tribal students.

School Education Minister Kedar Kashyap had stated education will be made accessible to depressed castes and classes.

Fifteen development blocks in 13 districts had been identified for constructing the hostels.The blocks selected are in districts of Gariabandh , Rajnandgaon, Koriya, Raigarh, Balrampur-Ramanujganj, Surajpur, Bastar , Kondagaon , Narayanpur , South Bastar (Dantewada) , Sukma , Bijapur and North Bastar (Kanker).