Centre tweaks recruitment rules for Eklavya residential schools: Hindi mandate eased, allows focus on regional languages

These tweaked norms were issued last week in the application guidelines on the 2025 EMRS staff selection exam by the National Education Society for Tribal Students (NESTS), an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

In 2023, when the Centre first took over the mandate of recruitment for EMRS, scoring a minimum number of marks in Hindi was mandatory for TGT candidates, even if they chose a regional language.

This relaxation has also been provided to candidates applying for the female staff nurse position at the residential schools, as per the guidelines. Hindi competency, however, will continue to be a requirement for post-graduate teacher candidates, who typically teach more senior school students from classes 9 to 12.

Government sources said the tweaks will ensure Hindi proficiency is not an impediment, and that the examination will be in English and Hindi. “We want to ensure that deficiency in one language is not a bottleneck for the applicants,” said an official.

In a recent dialogue between the Tribal Affairs Ministry and state tribal departments during the national conference on Adi Karmayogi Abhiyan scheme, Andhra Pradesh is learnt to have raised concerns regarding the language competency issue in the presence of Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Durgadas Uikey. Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Bihar are yet to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with NESTS, and hence these states have an independent recruitment process, and manage the residential schools at the state level.

The EMR schools were introduced in 1997-98, with the aim to provide quality education and boarding facilities for class six to class twelve tribal students in remote areas, at par with Navodaya Vidyalayas. In 2018-19, the scheme was revamped and made a central sector scheme in the Union Budget. The revamped scheme mandated that an EMRS will be set up in every block with more than 50% Scheduled Tribe population and at least 20,000 tribal persons.

As per a written reply given by Uikey in Rajya Sabha on August 6, there are 722 sanctioned schools, and 479 are functional, while 235 are under construction. As per the Centre’s EMRS dashboard, there are 1,46,540 students and with a total staff strength of 13,437.

After it was made a central sector scheme in 2018-19, the Union government took over the mandate of a centralised staff recruitment. This is the major round of centralised recruitment. In the latest invitation for applications, NESTS has advertised for 7,267 vacancies to fill up teaching and non-teaching staff posts. Of these, 3,962 are for trained graduate teachers, 1,460 for post graduate teachers, 225 for the post of principal, 635 for hostel warden and 550 for female staff nurses.

The Department of Expenditure has sanctioned a total of 38,480 teaching and non-teaching posts for EMRS’ in the country. Under the first phase, direct recruitment was conducted for 10,391 posts in 2023, and 9,075 were given posting orders including 7,050 for teaching positions as per government data. The number of vacancies in the latest round have been advertised combining the need for functional schools as well as those projected to be functional soon, government sources said.