Maharashtra’s School Education Department has announced a special school cleanliness and maintenance campaign from October 18 to 31, placing responsibility for planning, supervision and documentation on school administrations across the state. The drive will cover classrooms, laboratories, libraries, computer rooms, toilets, drinking-water facilities and playgrounds.
The campaign is being conducted under the ‘Chala Shalet Jau Ya’ initiative and the ‘My School, My Responsibility’ programme. According to the report by Lokmat – Pune, the department intends to improve school environments for teaching and learning through the participation of school management committees, teachers, parents, former students and local residents.
A government circular for the campaign was issued by Tushar Mahajan, deputy secretary in the School Education Department. The campaign will be conducted in two stages, with the first focused on assessment and planning and the second on carrying out the identified work.
Between October 18 and 24, schools will inspect their classrooms, laboratories, libraries, computer rooms, toilets, drinking-water arrangements and playgrounds. School administrations will have to prepare a list of required work and finalise an action plan based on the inspection. The exercise is intended to identify cleanliness, maintenance, minor-repair and beautification requirements at the school level.
The second stage, from October 25 to 31, will involve the actual cleaning, maintenance and minor-repair work. The headmaster will remain responsible for implementation at the school level. Centre heads, block education officers and education officers will review the execution of the campaign, according to the report.
Schools will also be required to preserve photographs taken before and after the campaign. This documentation requirement means that administrations will have to maintain records alongside carrying out the physical work. The school-level team will therefore be responsible for planning the activities, implementing them and recording the condition of facilities before and after the drive.
The department has not announced a separate additional fund for the campaign. Expenditure on cleanliness and maintenance may be made according to the rules from the composite school grant available under the Samagra Shiksha scheme. The circular also prohibits schools from collecting any compulsory contribution from students for the campaign.
The funding arrangement places the campaign within existing school-grant provisions rather than creating a dedicated financial allocation for the two-week exercise. The report does not specify the size of the composite grant available to individual schools or how schools with larger repair requirements will meet those costs within the permitted provision.
The campaign’s stated objective is to make school premises clean, attractive and safe, while involving the wider school community in their upkeep. Its immediate administrative milestones are the completion of inspections and action plans by October 24, followed by the completion and documentation of cleaning, maintenance and minor repairs by October 31.
