For a change, government school students will be the envy of their private, elite school counterparts.

Starting August 9, nearly 4,000 bright students from government schools of all 24 districts, many from remote areas, will be sponsored on trips to Hyderabad, Delhi, Amritsar, Jaipur, Bangalore and Mysore.

The project, Mukhya Mantri Shaikshanik Bhraman Yojana or CM educational tour, follows an MoU inked on August 1 by Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC), a wing of the state school education and literacy department, and Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC, a subsidiary of the Indian Railways).

The first batch will start for Hyderabad on August 9, the second for Delhi and Amritsar on August 21, the third for Delhi and Jaipur on September 4 and the fourth and last batch for Bangalore-Mysore on September 21.

The CM educational tour scheme started successfully in 2017 but could not take off in 2018 as the IRCTC failed to provide rakes.

But now, as part of the pact, the IRCTC will give an 18-coach train for four trips on different dates between August and September to different locations starting from Ranchi. In each of the four trips, 40 academically meritorious students, each from 24 districts, accompanied by teachers, doctors and paramedics, will travel by train and stay at IRCTC hotels free of cost for the duration of the tour, which could be around five days.

“We are happy to have inked the MoU with the IRCTC for the educational tour for state-run schools which will give an opportunity to underprivileged students, especially from rural parts, to see the history associated with important cities of India,” said JEPC director Uma Shanker Singh.

A source in the JEPC informed that selected students would have to furnish a health certificate from their district civil surgeons concerned certifying they were medically fit to travel.

“Each district civil surgeon will have to hold a camp to issue medical fitness certificates to students between Class VI and XII who have been selected (for the trips) on the basis of their academic performance. Each district can send a maximum of 40 students per batch. For each batch, four physicians and 16 paramedics will accompany the students. All trains will leave from Ranchi station. We are hoping to have around 4,000 students this time in four batches (960 students per batch),” said JEPC state coordinator quality education Avinav Kumar.

In 2017, around 3,000 students from 24 districts had toured Delhi, Bangalore, Mysore, Calcutta, Bhubaneswar and Puri under the scheme.