{"id":34880,"date":"2022-11-16T11:04:36","date_gmt":"2022-11-16T05:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=34880"},"modified":"2025-04-20T18:08:27","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T12:38:27","slug":"population-criteria-for-new-eklavya-schools-impractical-says-parliamentary-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/population-criteria-for-new-eklavya-schools-impractical-says-parliamentary-committee\/","title":{"rendered":"Population Criteria for New Eklavya Schools \u2018Impractical\u2019, Says Parliamentary Committee"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Background (About Criteria set by Ministry, Standing Committee\u2019s concerns)<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>About EMRS (Purpose, Features, Changes, Challenges)\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why In News?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Tribal Affairs Ministry intends to go ahead with its plan to build new\u00a0<strong>Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS)<\/strong>\u00a0on 15 acres of land in all sub-districts which have Scheduled Tribe communities of more than 20,000 people, who make up at least 50% of their total population.<\/li>\n<li>This is despite a Parliamentary panel saying that this criteria is \u201cimpractical\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Background:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Earlier this year, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment recommended immediate review of criteria of having 15 acres of continuous land.<\/li>\n<li>The committee had pointed out significant difficulties in identifying and acquiring lands in several districts, especially in forested or hilly areas where a contiguous 15-acre plot is hard to find.<\/li>\n<li>This criterion would also deprive scattered ST populations of the benefit of the Eklavya schools, the panel said.<\/li>\n<li>However, the\u00a0<strong>Tribal Affairs Ministry<\/strong>\u00a0said that these criteria were decided and finalised by the Union Cabinet and the ministry intends to go ahead with it.<\/li>\n<li>In keeping with the government\u2019s intent, President Draupadi Murmu laid the foundation stones for seven more such Eklavya schools in Jharkhand on\u00a0<strong>Janjatiya Gaurav Divas<\/strong>\u00a0on November 15.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>About Eklavya Model Residential School (EMRS):<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>EMRS started in\u00a0<strong>1997-98<\/strong>\u00a0with the aim of imparting quality education to children belonging to Scheduled Tribes (ST) in remote areas.<\/li>\n<li>The EMRS aims to enable students to avail of opportunities in high and professional educational courses and get employment in various sectors.<\/li>\n<li>The schools focus not only on academic education but on the all-round development of the students.<\/li>\n<li>Each school has a\u00a0<strong>capacity of 480 students, catering to students from Class VI to XII<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>These are being set up by grants provided under\u00a0<strong>Article 275(1) of the Constitution<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Nodal Ministry \u2013 Ministry of Tribal Affairs<\/li>\n<li><strong>Eklavya Model Day Boarding Schools (EMDBS) \u2013<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Wherever density of ST population is higher in identified Sub-Districts (90% or more), it is proposed to set up Eklavya Model Day Boarding School (EMDBS) on an experimental basis.<\/li>\n<li>This is aimed at providing additional scope for ST Students seeking to avail school education without residential facility.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Latest changes made by the Ministry:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>In order to give further impetus to EMRS, it has been decided that by the year 2022, every block with more than 50% ST population and at least 20,000 tribal persons, will have an EMRS.<\/li>\n<li>Eklavya schools will be on par with Navodaya Vidyalaya and will have special facilities for preserving local art and culture besides providing training in sports and skill development.<\/li>\n<li>Across the country, as per census 2011 figures,\u00a0<u>there are 564 such sub-districts out of which there is an EMRS in 102 sub-districts<\/u>. Thus, 462 new schools have to be opened by the year 2022.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Challenges in setting up schools under EMRS:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The government had submitted that in many areas where the population criteria is met,\u00a0<u>suitable land is not available for constructing the schools and even if the land is available, the legal acquisition of the land is taking time<\/u>.<\/li>\n<li>Moreover, in hilly areas, Left-Wing Extremism-affected areas, and North-East India, finding a contiguous piece of land measuring 15-acres, as recommended, in areas where the population criteria is met, is becoming one of the most difficult tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EMRS aims to provide quality education to children belonging to Scheduled Tribes (ST) in remote areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":34881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}