Maha clears Rs 3 crore for NASA trip for 51 science expo winners

Nagpur: The Maharashtra govt has approved over Rs3crore to send 51 school science exhibition awardees on an eight-day educational trip to NASA in the US under the Mukhyamantri Vidyarthi Vigyan Yatri scheme.The scheme is the brainchild of minister of state (education) Pankaj Bhoyar who wrote to CM Devendra Fadnavis last year saying such an initiative will bolster science exhibition's quality. CM Fadnavis gave the green signal during the recently concluded assembly session, which apart from a trip to NASA for the top state-level awardees, also funds trips to ISRO for those who won at the district level.The delegation to NASA will include 51 students along with a male teacher, a female teacher, and two administrative officers. The expenditure will be drawn from the state education budget under the relevant head for the State Science Education Institute.The students will be selected from those who top the state-level science exhibition, across general, divyang, and tribal categories in both primary and secondary groups. Of the 51 seats, 17 will go to the primary general category, 18 to the secondary general category, four each to the primary and secondary divyang categories, and four each to the primary and secondary tribal categories. A committee chaired by the director SCERT, Pune, will handle the selection and planning for the NASA visit.The scheme, cleared by the Cabinet on March 24, links school science exhibitions at three levels — taluka, district, and state — to progressively higher-profile educational visits. At the district level, 180 selected students and eight supervisors will visit ISRO in Bengaluru, with a per-person ceiling of Rs 35,000, funded through DPDC allocations.At the taluka level, the top six students from each of Maharashtra's 358 talukas — totalling 2,148 students and 20 supervisors — will visit the nearest regional science centre. Nagpur-region students will go to Raman Science Centre, Nagpur; Pune-region students to Pimpri-Chinchwad Science Centre; and Mumbai-region students to Nehru Planetarium.
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