Dikhyaa Mohanty 
On the first day of her visit to Odisha, President Droupadi Murmu will open the brand-new Eklavya Model Residential School (EMRS) at Kuliana in the Mayurbhanj district. According to official sources on Sunday, a number of dignitaries, including Odisha Governor Raghubar Das, Union Minister of Tribal Affairs Arjun Munda, Union Minister of State for Jal Shakti and Tribal Affairs Bishweswar Tudu, and many others, will be present on the occasion.
The Central government’s flagship program for providing tribal students with high-quality education is Eklavya Residential Model School. Prime Minister Narendra Modi oversaw the approval of 452 new Eklavya Residential Model Schools in 2019, one for each tribal block with 20,000 students and at least 50% of them being ST.
On September 12, 2019, the Prime Minister introduced the program in Ranchi, Jharkhand.Additionally, the recurring fee for each student was raised from Rs. 61,000 to Rs. 1,09,000. The cost of building the EMRS was increased later in 2022 from Rs 20 crore to Rs 24 crore in plain areas and Rs 38 crore to Rs 48 crore in hilly areas, respectively. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs would establish a total of 740 schools by March 2026, including the construction of 452 schools approved in 2019 out of the 288 schools sanctioned prior to 2019 under the previous scheme.
This program, which is modeled after Navodaya Vidyalayas, is being carried out by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs through the National Education Society for Tribal Students (NESTS). For these schools, the NESTS is also hiring over 38,000 teachers and non-teachers.
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