Uttar Pradesh govt to open 10 new Sanskrit schools

The 10 districts where these schools are supposed to come up include — Varanasi, Rae Bareli, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad, Shamli, Jalaun, Etah, Amethi, and Hardoi. At present, only one government Sanskrit secondary and one government Sanskrit degree college are operating in the entire state. All other such institutions are being run privately.

The establishment of new Uttar Madhyama (intermediate-level) Sanskrit schools is among the top priorities of U.P. chief minister Yogi Adityanath. After getting an in-principle consent from the state government, the officials of the state directorate of education have formally requested for the allocation of funds towards the construction of these new Sanskrit schools, added officials.

It is worth mentioning that for the creation of assets of Sanskrit schools, the state government made a provision of ₹100 crore in the 2023-24 budget. Meanwhile, the government is also gearing up to open Government Sanskrit Secondary Schools of intermediate level in another five districts — Gorakhpur, Prayagraj, Ayodhya, Chitrakoot and Mathura –which are being developed as the key religious centres.

Earlier on March 22, principal secretary Deepak Kumar wrote a letter to the district magistrates of these five districts, a copy of which is with HT, seeking information about the availability of three acres of land for construction of each of these proposed new colleges. Notably, the state government allocated ₹10 crore for the scholarships of students studying Sanskrit in the state in the 2023-24 budget.

Earlier, Sanskrit students used to get a scholarship budget of ₹2 lakh in the state. Recently, officers of the secondary education department sent a proposal to the state government to grant scholarships to all the students studying the subject from school to college level in government-run, unaided, and self-financed Sanskrit schools and colleges running across Uttar Pradesh at ₹131 crore.