Gadchiroli snakebite tragedy brings Maharashtra’s ashram school safety system under scrutiny years after Kayapalat sought to ensure no tribal child would sleep, eat or study on the floor
By Vivek Bhavsar
Mumbai: Three tribal girls are dead. They were among six students bitten by a venomous snake while sleeping on the floor of a residential ashram school in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district. Beyond the immediate tragedy, their deaths have once again raised an uncomfortable question over Maharashtra’s tribal education system: Why are children still sleeping on floors years after the state undertook a nearly ₹200-crore transformation programme built around the promise that no tribal child should have to sleep, eat or study on the floor?
The question assumes greater significance after senior IAS officer Manisha Verma, currently Additional Chief Secretary in the Maharashtra government and a former head of the Tribal Development Department, recalled the origins and implementation of Kayapalat Abhiyan, a programme that, according to her, transformed residential infrastructure across hundreds of government ashram schools and hostels. Reacting to the Gadchiroli deaths, Verma has now called for a physical and honest audit of every school—government as well as private aided—to determine whether children have beds, functional toilets, safe campuses, access to medical assistance and emergency transport. Her account provides an important institutional backdrop to a tragedy that has once again exposed the gap that can exist between policy intent and ground-level conditions in residential institutions meant for some of Maharashtra’s most vulnerable children.
Six Girls Bitten While Sleeping on Floor
The Gadchiroli incident occurred at an aided residential ashram school in Dhanora taluka, where six tribal girls sleeping on the hostel floor were bitten by a venomous snake. Three subsequently died, triggering an official inquiry and serious questions over basic residential and safety facilities at the institution. The Maharashtra government subsequently initiated action against the institution, while Tribal Development Minister Ashok Uike directed that its students be shifted to another school with appropriate residential and educational facilities. But action after three deaths leaves a larger question unanswered: What mechanism existed to ensure that such conditions did not arise in the first place? That question becomes more pertinent when Maharashtra’s earlier attempts to transform tribal residential education are examined.
A Promise Born Nearly Three Decades Ago
For Verma, the Gadchiroli tragedy brought back memories from her years in the administration. She recalled her tenure nearly three decades ago as a Project Officer in the remote tribal region of Nashik, when monthly reports would record deaths of children in ashram schools. Some children, she recalled, died from illnesses for which medical assistance was too far away. Snakebite—or sarpadansh—repeatedly appeared as a cause. The conditions she described were stark: inadequate toilets, poor access to healthcare, shortages of anti-snake venom at health centres and children sleeping, eating and studying on floors.
Years later, when Verma headed Maharashtra’s Tribal Development Department, those experiences became the foundation for Kayapalat Abhiyan. Its core promise was simple: No child should sleep on the floor. No child should eat on the floor. No child should study on the floor.
Nearly ₹200 Crore, 502 Schools, 491 Hostels
According to Verma’s account, Kayapalat eventually covered 502 government ashram schools and 491 government hostels, reaching nearly 2.5 lakh students in remote tribal regions of Maharashtra. The mission-mode programme required nearly ₹200 crore. Instead of drawing upon existing state allocations or diverting resources from other tribal schemes, Verma said the project was presented to the Government of India and the entire funding requirement was secured through Central Assistance. The exercise went considerably beyond purchasing furniture.
Verma said 125 field teams comprising 400 officers and employees conducted three rounds of visits to assess requirements, monitor progress and evaluate repairs, modernisation, construction and procurement. Officials physically visited schools and hostels, measured classrooms and dormitories and interacted with teachers, parents and students. School Management Committees were also involved. The objective, according to her account, was to ensure that procurement corresponded to actual requirements on the ground rather than estimates sitting in government files.
More Than 22,000 Bunk Beds Procured
Procurement was centralised through the Government e-Marketplace, or GeM. According to figures disclosed by Verma, surveys identified requirements across 18 categories of daily-use furniture. The department procured 30,809 large desks, 37,104 small desks and 22,135 bunk beds, besides dining tables, chairs, cupboards and other essentials. The furniture was specifically designed for the Tribal Development Department and marked with distinctive logos, an arrangement intended to prevent diversion or resale.
But Kayapalat was not conceived merely as a furniture procurement exercise. Its purpose was to change the environment in which tribal children lived and studied—to replace classrooms where children bent over notebooks on floors with desks and chairs, provide proper dining spaces and ensure that children had proper beds instead of sleeping on the ground. Years later, the Gadchiroli tragedy has brought that basic objective back into focus.
The Critical Distinction: Government and Aided Schools
There is an important distinction that cannot be overlooked while examining the Gadchiroli deaths. Kayapalat, as described by Verma, covered government ashram schools and government hostels. The Gadchiroli tragedy occurred in an aided ashram school. It would therefore be incorrect, without further evidence, to describe the deaths as proof that Kayapalat itself failed. Instead, the incident raises another, and perhaps larger, policy question.
If Maharashtra had established a benchmark under which children in government ashram schools should not sleep on floors, were equivalent minimum residential standards ensured across the aided ashram school system? If such standards existed, how effectively were they inspected and enforced? And if they did not, why should the safety and dignity available to a tribal child depend upon the administrative category of the residential school in which that child happens to study?
Five Days Before Deaths, Another Bed Policy
There is another disturbing layer to the chronology. According to a report published after the Gadchiroli deaths, Maharashtra’s Tribal Development Department had issued a consolidated policy just five days before the tragedy, requiring students in government-run tribal hostels to receive a cot, mattress, blanket and pillow. Again, that policy concerned government hostels and cannot automatically be applied to the aided school where the deaths occurred.
But taken together, the two episodes underline a persistent gap in the tribal residential education system: Maharashtra has repeatedly recognised that children require proper sleeping facilities, yet children in parts of the wider ashram school network continue to sleep on floors. The issue, therefore, is no longer whether policymakers understand the requirement. The question is whether minimum standards reach every child, irrespective of whether the institution is directly operated by the government or run as an aided ashram school.
Government Orders Audit of 553 Aided Ashram Schools
The state’s response after the Gadchiroli deaths indicates that the concern is not being restricted to one institution. Tribal Development Minister Ashok Uike has announced a third-party audit of 553 aided ashram schools, with a 90-day deadline to identify deficiencies in basic facilities. Schools found seriously deficient could face closure. The audit is expected to examine residential facilities, health management, student safety and quality. The exercise will now test whether the Gadchiroli tragedy leads to systemic correction across the aided ashram school network or ends with action against one institution and a few officials.
‘We Must Now Audit Every School’
Verma has argued for going further. “We must now audit every school—government and private aided—not through reports alone, but physically and honestly,” she wrote. Her proposed checklist goes directly to the conditions that determine whether a residential school is safe. Does every child have a bed? Is there a decent environment in which to study? Are toilets functional? Is the campus safe? Is anti-snake venom available within reachable distance? Is transportation available during a medical emergency? And, crucially, is somebody clearly responsible for ensuring that these requirements are met? These may appear to be basic questions.
But the Gadchiroli deaths demonstrate why the answers cannot remain confined to inspection reports and government files.
An Older Warning From Gadchiroli
Concerns over safety in tribal residential schools, particularly in districts such as Gadchiroli, are not new. A Tata Institute of Social Sciences study on the health and nutritional needs of ashram school students had examined injuries and accidents among girls across selected areas in Palghar, Nandurbar, Yavatmal and Gadchiroli. The study found a particularly high incidence of reported injuries and accidents among surveyed girls in Gadchiroli and Yavatmal, noting that geography and dense forest cover could contribute to incidents including scorpion and snake bites. That makes preventive infrastructure and emergency preparedness particularly important in residential institutions operating in such terrain.
The issue is not whether snakes can be eliminated from forested tribal regions. The real question is whether residential facilities can minimise children’s exposure to a known risk and whether the medical response system is capable of acting quickly when an emergency occurs.
From Kayapalat to the Next Audit
Kayapalat demonstrated that Maharashtra had, at one point, attempted to treat beds, desks and dining facilities not as luxuries but as basic components of dignity in tribal education. According to Verma, the infrastructure created under the programme later served an unforeseen purpose during the COVID-19 pandemic, when ashram schools were used as relief and health camps for migrant workers. But no public programme can be considered permanently successful merely because infrastructure was created once.
Furniture deteriorates. Buildings require maintenance. Officers are transferred. Institutional priorities change. Inspection systems weaken. And programmes implemented in mission mode can gradually disappear from administrative memory. That is precisely why the present audit matters. It must establish not simply what aided ashram schools possess on paper, but where children actually sleep, where they eat, whether toilets work, how quickly medical help can reach them and who is accountable when minimum standards are absent.
The ₹200-Crore Question
The Gadchiroli deaths should not be used to suggest that Maharashtra never attempted reform. The record placed in the public domain by Verma suggests precisely the opposite: an extensive programme was undertaken to improve conditions in hundreds of government ashram schools and hostels. And that makes today’s question even more difficult to ignore.
If Maharashtra once mobilised nearly ₹200 crore, hundreds of officers and field teams, and procured more than 22,000 bunk beds around the principle that tribal children deserved dignity and safety, how did the larger residential education system still reach a point where six girls could be sleeping on a floor when a snake struck? The third-party audit of 553 aided ashram schools may provide part of the answer. But an audit will have meaning only if its findings lead to measurable standards, transparent compliance, timely funding, physical verification and, above all, clear accountability. Three children have already paid the highest possible price.
The question before Maharashtra now is not whether another policy can be written. It is whether the promise that “no child should sleep on the floor” can finally become a minimum, enforceable standard across every residential institution entrusted with the lives of tribal children.
