Project Alankar: 11 U.P. govt-aided Sanskrit schools set for revamp, ₹2.91 cr approved

Eleven government-aided Sanskrit secondary schools of Uttar Pradesh that are over 50 years old, are all set to get a major revamp, with support from the state government.

For the exercise, ₹2.91 crore has been approved and ₹1.10 crore (40%) has been released as the first instalment under Project Alankar— a state government programme that aims to modernise and revitalise secondary schools, informed officials of the state secondary education department.

Special secretary (secondary education) Alok Kumar has sent a missive in this regard to the director (secondary education) dated February 28, they added.

The most number of schools (five) for which the funds have been released, are in Varanasi, followed by two in Ayodhya and one each in Deoria, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Azamgarh and Shahjahanpur, the missive reads, a copy of which is with the Hindustan Times.

A key aspect of this initiative is that the state government will cover 95% of the renovation cost, while the remaining 5% will be incurred by the respective school management under this initiative, officials said.

Earlier, the state government required school managements to bear 50% of the renovation costs, which led to their withdrawal from the initiative. As a result, funds worth ₹28 crore allocated for this purpose in 2021 went unused and lapsed.

The state government then decided to relax the norms. Officials of the state secondary education department then made a provision of taking only 5% of the total proposed expenditure on renovation from the management committees of the respective schools by changing the conditions which saw renewed interest in the initiative by school managements since 2024.