Telangana seeks Centre's support for construction of Young India schools

New Delhi, Sep 9 (PTI) Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Tuesday sought the Centre's permission to set up a special corporation to mobilize funds for construction of 'Young India Integrated Residential Schools' in the state.

In a meeting with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman he also requested for relaxation of Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBM) limits for this initiative.

He apprised Sitharaman of the state government's several measures to provide corporate-style education to the backward classes, Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) and minority sections who constitute about 90 per cent of the state's population.

In the meeting, Reddy shared about the state's plans to construct 105 Young India Integrated Residential Schools in each of 105 assembly constituencies.

The construction work of four such schools has started and tenders for the remaining have been finalized. Each school will accommodate 2,560 students, and 2.70 lakh students will get the opportunity to study in all schools in the state, he said.

Reddy also stressed on the requirement of funds to construct the Young India schools with state-of-the-art facilities. The total cost of construction of the schools will be Rs 21,000 crore. About Rs 9,000 crore will be spent on providing modern labs and other infrastructure in junior, degree, technical colleges and other higher educational institutions.

"To meet the financial requirement for the construction of the residential schools, the CM appealed to Nirmala Sitharaman to permit the state government to constitute a special corporation to mobilize funds and also exempt from the FRBM limit," an official statement said.

Reddy told the Union Minister that the state government was spending huge funds on the education sector considering it as an investment .

He also requested her to allow restructuring of the loans as the previous government had arbitrarily borrowed loans at high interest rates and repayment of loans had become a huge burden on the state government.

"The union minister responded positively to the CM’s requests," the statement added.

Congress MPs Mallu Ravi, Porika Balaram Nayak, Suresh Shetkar, Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy, State Finance Principal Secretary Sandeep Kumar Sultania, and Central Projects and Schemes Coordinating Secretary Gaurav Uppal were also present in the meeting. PTI LUX LUX ANU ANU