Over 2.96 crore school students across 24 states do not have access to digital devices with Bihar reporting the highest number, according to government data presented in Lok Sabha Monday.
 
The total of 2.96 crore does not include such students from Delhi (4 per cent) Jammu and Kashmir (70 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (70 per cent), Punjab (42 per cent) and Chhattisgarh (28.27 per cent) as their absolute numbers were not shared.

While the data for states including Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra, Manipur and Uttar Pradesh is not available, while the survey for West Bengal was still in process.

The details were presented by Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in a written response to a question in the Lower House.

In terms of absolute numbers, Bihar has the highest number of such students at 1.43 crore, followed by Jharkhand (35.52 lakh), Karnataka (31.31 lakh) and Assam (31.06 lakh). Uttarakhand has 21 lakh such children.

Meanwhile, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan is likely to visit Patna soon to review the progress in different central government schemes in Bihar, state education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said on Sunday.

Choudhary met Pradhan in New Delhi and held a detailed discussion with him on various issues related to education, that the Union minister has assured him of sympathetic consideration of all the state demands. Chowdhury drew Pradhan attention towards drastic curtailment of salaries of teachers working under Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and also the stoppage of salary payment to a large number of teachers under this scheme.

Other states with over 10 lakh children without digital device are Haryana, Odisha and Tamil Nadu, while Kerala has 9.5 lakh children in this category, he said.

Due to the prolonged school closures forced by COVID-19, the teacher and learning process has moved online.

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