Odisha CM urges ministers, HC judges to adopt schools

Chief Minister NaveenPatnaik Monday urged Orissa High Court judges, two Unionministers from the state and all ministers, MLAs and MPs ofOdisha to adopt government schools under the Mo Schoolinitiative.

In a letter to the elected representatives and judges,Patnaik advised them to adopt the schools in which they hadstudied or any school of their choice.

A person can adopt a maximum of three schools underthe initiative, he said.

The move came after a number of bureaucrats, includingChief Secretary S C Mohapatra, came forward to adopt schoolsfor their holistic development this year.

''All of us have an emotional link with the school inwhich we have studied and so it should be our moralresponsibility to ensure that the schools develop and achievetheir highest potential,'' he said.

The chief minister had launched the Mo Schoolcampaign on Childrens Day, 2017 to bring together the alumniand the community for revamping government and government-aided schools.

The fund for the programme comes from donors and acorpus of Rs 100 crore has been created by the stategovernment.

An official said, about 25,000 schools in the statehave so far come under the 'Mo School' initiative.

The government has approved projects worth Rs 57.49crore for 8,877 schools during 2020-21 fiscal. Of this Rs19.16 crore was contributed by alumni of different schools,while Rs 38.32 crore was provided by the government from thecorpus.

While Chief Secretary S C Mohapatra has committed toadopt D N High School in Keonjhar, chief advisor to the ChiefMinister R Balakrishnan and principal advisor to the CM AsitTripathy, who is also the chief of Western Odisha DevelopmentCouncil, will adopt Jajpur Government High School andTitlagarh High School respectively, the official said.

Works Secretary Krishan Kumar and Roopa Roshan Sahoo,additional secretary to the chief minister, will adopt threeschools under this initiative.

School and Mass Education Secretary Satyabrata Sahu,will adopt Manikeswari High School in Bhawanipatna.