Days after the Union Education Ministry stopped providing funding to the states of Delhi and West Bengal under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) due to their unwillingness to take part in the school upgrade initiative, the Punjab government has written to the Centre expressing willingness to implement the Pradhan Mantri Schools for Rising India (PM SHRI) scheme.
Punjab now seeks to receive Rs 515 crore under the SSA, which the Centre docked after the state declined to carry out the program designed to transform government schools into “exemplar” establishments that would showcase the National Education Policy, 2020 (NEP) and provide students with a “rooted to the heritage of India and values of Bharat, Indian languages,” and “Ek Bharat Shreshth Bharat.”
Punjab had opted out of the project despite confirming its participation by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Education Ministry.
“The matter was considered again and decision has been taken that the state of Punjab will implement PM SHRI scheme…for that it is requested to provide indicative budget to prepare the plan under this scheme and also open the Prabandh Portal on which the plan may be submitted…,” Punjab education secretary Kamal Kishor Yadav wrote to Union education secretary Sanjay Kumar, in a letter dated July 26.
Confirming that Punjab has agreed to implement PM SHRI scheme, Union Minister of State for Education Jayant Chaudhary, in a written reply to a question by MP Harsimrat Badal during the ongoing Lok Sabha session, replied: “…state of Punjab, on the repeated requests of Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, has communicated that they will implement PM SHRI scheme. Therefore, there is no logjam between the Government and the State Government of Punjab over the PM SHRI scheme”.
Over the next five years, the initiative will upgrade 14,500 schools nationwide with a budget of Rs 27,000 crore. The Centre would share 60% of the cost, with the states contributing the remaining 40%. 241 schools in Punjab were chosen for the program’s infrastructural upgrading. From pre-school to class XII, the SSA pays for the essential costs of government schools, including as teacher wages, facilities, supplies, and books.
The state government had begun to feel the squeeze, according to a senior Punjabi official who asked to remain anonymous, since it was “not possible for us to continue school education programs running without Center’s 60% grant.”
“Everything, from books, construction of new buildings and classrooms were affected. The decision was reconsidered at CM’s level and it was decided to implement the PM-SHRI scheme in the state,” the official said.
Under the SSA for Punjab, the Centre withheld the first installment for FY2024–25 (about Rs165 crore) and the third and fourth installments for FY2023–24 (around Rs350 crore). After several letters by state education department to the Centre requesting the release of funds failed to yield any result, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann also shot off a letter to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan stating that the “non release of fund is going to be very detrimental to the education system at large”.
Mann further wrote that due to the “non-release of the already allocated budget, the basic activities under Samagra and…RTE entitlements of students have come to a halt” in the state. However, the state neither received any reply to Mann’s letter, nor were the funds released.
Punjab had signed the MoU with the Centre in October 2022 and schools that were to be upgraded were identified, but the state later backed out. On March 9, Pradhan wrote to Mann, stating that “Punjab has unilaterally opted out of the PM-SHRI scheme, contrary to the terms stipulated in the signed MoU”.
On March 15, Punjab’s education secretary, Kamal Kishor Yadav, wrote to Centre that the state doesn’t want to be a part of the project. He said that the state was already implementing its own “Schools of Eminence”, “Schools of Brilliance” and “Schools of Happiness”, which would be aligned with NEP.
Officials from the Punjab education department had been correspondingly writing letters over unpaid SSA claims. Vinay Bublani, the state project director for Samagra Shiksha in Punjab, wrote to Vipin Kumar, the joint secretary of the Ministry of Education, on January 18 to urge the release of money “so that balance payments and targets fixed could be achieved in time.”
“Currently there is no balance in the Single Nodal Account of Samagra Shiksha due to which payments for some activities, including employees’ salaries, are pending,” wrote Yadav in a letter to his counterpart in the federal government, Sanjay Kumar, on March 5.
Harjot Singh Bains, the minister of education for Punjab, had previously stated that if the Centre did not deliver the funds under the SSA, it would be impossible to pay salaries starting in September.
