Education Ministry has Spent Rs 64.38 Cr. on Pariksha Pe Charcha since 2020

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s annual chat show with students, parents and teachers, Pariksha Pe Charcha, has seen a cost of Rs 64.38 crore since 2020. Pariksha Pe Charcha (PPC) is a platform where PM Modi talks to students about board exams and shares tips related to them. The PPC has been held since 2018. The Lok Sabha was informed about the expenditure after MPs Mala Roy and Manickam Tagore shared the cost and rationale for the allocation of such funds from the Ministry of Education.

Pariksha Pe Charcha: Expenditure

The total expenditure spent on Pariksha Pe Charcha (PPC) has changed significantly in the last five years. The expenditure in 2020 was Rs 5.69 crore, which increased marginally to Rs 6 crore in 2021.

The expenditure for Pariksha Pe Charcha continued to rise in 2022 as well and reached Rs 8.16 crore. However, a significant increase was seen in 2023, when the expenditure reached Rs 27.70 crore, the highest amount spent during this period. In 2024, the expenditure dropped to Rs 16.83 crore, yet it remained significantly higher than the amount recorded before 2023.

“As mentioned above, the expenditure is incurred on various components, including hospitality of children coming from across the country and overall organisation of the event,” the written reply uploaded on the website said. Roy and Tagore also asked the ministry if the National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) was being implemented.

To this question, Jayant Chaudhary, minister of state in the education ministry, said, “The third-party evaluation report has revealed several limitations in the design and implementation of the scheme, such as persistent low representation of rural areas, girls and certain states in scholarship winners, lack of access to examination centres due to long travel distances, lack of financial support, ineffective nutrition and inadequate dissemination of the scheme.”

Chaudhary said that as a result, the scheme and its key components are being comprehensively reviewed to align with the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) and to address key limitations and make it more effective. The budget of the Ministry of Education has also increased over the years to Rs 93,224 crore for the year 2021-22 and now it has reached Rs 1,21,118 crore in the year 2024-25 for various activities of the Ministry.

This year the Ministry of Education organized the eighth edition of Pariksha Pe Charcha on February 10. The event was held at Sunder Nursery, in which various celebrities interacted with the students. Famous sports and Bollywood personalities like actors Deepika Padukone, Vikrant Massey, Bhumi Pednekar, six-time world champion boxer MC Mary Kom as well as spiritual guru Sadhguru attended the event and shared their tips with the students.

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