Girls in Sainik Schools

It is a matter worth appreciating that the Union government has approved admission of girl students in Class VI in the lone Sainik School of Arunachal Pradesh situated at Niglok in East Siang district from the 2021-22 academic session onwards. State Chief Minister Pema Khandu, who was instrumental in establishment of a Sainik School in the frontier state in 2018, was pressing the Centre for making provisions for admission of girl students too. Sainik Schools were first conceptualized and launched way back in 1961 by the Defence Minister VK Krishna Menon in the basic intention of rectifying the regional and class imbalance amongst the Officer cadre of the Indian Defence Forces, and also to prepare students for entry into the National Defence Academy and the Indian Naval Academy. The Vision statement of the Sainik Schools Society, a body under the Ministry of Defence, speaks of offering quality education to the children of rural masses and to develop qualities of body, mind and character which will enable the young boys to become good and useful citizens and eventually be a feeder to National Defence Academy. But then, while these schools remained exclusively a male domain for close to 60 years, it was in 2018 that the BJP-led government opened the gates for girls – with the first successful experiment in the Sainik School at Chhingchhip in Mizoram. From 2020-21, the government opened up five more Sainik Schools for girls across the country, these being at Bijapur, Chandrapur, Ghorakhal, Kalikiri and Kodagu. The Sainik School in Arunachal Pradesh will take in girls from 2021 onwards. What remains to be seen is the opening of doors for girls in three other Sainik Schools in the Northeast, these being located at Goalpara (Assam), Imphal (Manipur) and Punglwa (Nagaland).