Delay in Corporation Loan has Hit the School Infrastructure Projects in Delhi

Construction of over 7000 classrooms across the 146 schools in Delhi has been recently sanctioned by the Delhi government, work in some of which has already begun. Though, according to the Education Minister Manish Sisodia, many infrastructure projects had to be put on hold because of the Rs. 551 crore loans that they have to give the municipal corporations.

A dozen schools, most of which are situated in the south east district of Delhi, will get over 100 classrooms each. A total of 7289 classrooms are scheduled to be made throughout the schools in Delhi. South East Delhi will get the maximum number of classrooms with over 1600 in numbers. The North East including areas like Semapuri, Nand Nagri, Suder Nagri will get 1323 classrooms. West B area will get around 1287 classrooms. The Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya, Burai will get the largest number of classroom, which is 124 in number.

The Directorate of Education has taken out a list of schools with acute shortage of classrooms as per the RTE Act norms on 2 February. It has also said that, “Administrative approval has been granted for construction of additional classrooms in the existing school premises.” In some of the schools new structures will be made by demolishing the older ones and replacing the damaged ones. The RTE has made a limit on the maximum number of students that can seat in a classroom which should not exceed 30 in primary classes and 35 in the upper primary section. The DoE has picked schools which had student-classroom ratio of over 50 and enlisted them in their section.

According to the Sisodia, “I checked which tenders can be issued later and whether it will mean a huge delay. I was told infrastructure projects that will have been completed, say in July, will be ready by September. In any case, we’ll make provisions for these in the forthcoming budget”, as the budget allocation for the year has dried up.

Sisodia has plans to expand the classroom numbers to 8000 by the year 2017. Presently 25 new school buildings are near completion and another 100 are being planned.