Dr Sasmit Patra posted a question to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs enquiring about the details and expenditure for the construction of hostels for the Scheduled Tribe students in various states. In the reply to the question, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA), Smt. Renuka Singh Saruta stated the details of the ST hostels in state wise available in the country. As per the published notification, Indian currently operates 1545 ST hostels in which more than one lakh ST students are living.
The notification released by the Minister State for Tribal Affairs in reply to the questions raised by Mr Patra (unstarred questions number 3491). The reply by Smt. Renuka Singh Saruta provided a clear stance on the total expense the central government has to bear for the construction of these Scheduled Tribe hostels along with the occupancy it has. In addition to this, the answer also had the timeline during which the hostels were built across the states.
Initially, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) had a separate hostel scheme for girls and boys of Scheduled Tribe i.e. “Hostels for ST Girls and Boys”. In this scheme, the centre would send funds to the respective states for the constructions of hostels. However, the Ministry of Tribal States passed a rationalization of the scheme and post that the construction of the hostel was converted into the scheme of Special Central Assistance to Tribal Sub-Scheme (SCA to TSS) and Grants under Article 275(1) of the Constitution from 2018-19. Post-approval of this scheme, the centre will now release funds to the state government for the construction of the hostel once they send the proposal related to the same.
According to the latest reports, there are a total of 1545 hostels across all the states in India with an occupancy of 1,14,516. The highest number of the sanctioned hostel from all the states is Odhisha with 369 requirements having a capacity of 33840 seats. The second-largest capacity of the ST hostel is for the state Madhya Pradesh with 283 sanctioned hostels having occupancy of 143300 seats. The lowest proposals were from Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand where only 2 hostel proposals were sent to the MoTA with a capacity of 200 seats each.
Moreover, the expenditure for the year 2019-2020 has been decreased. As per the uploaded notification, in the year 2019-2020 for 37 new sanctioned hostels, expenditure of Rs. 11777.00/- was assigned. However, previously, expenditure of Rs. 17426.9/- was allocated for 29 sanctioned hostels.
