Agartala: The central government will provide 90 percent of the amount required to enroll and educate high school students in the northeastern states, a minister said here on Friday.

The students in the age group of 15-16 years will be enrolled under Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA).

"Of the eight northeastern states, Tripura and Mizoram have already submitted proposals to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) to start the new scheme," Tripura School Education Minister Tapan Chakraborty told reporters.

"The ministry will bear 90 percent of the project expenditure of the education scheme in the northeastern states while for remaining states 75 percent of the cost will be borne by the central government," he said.

The HRD ministry has called a meeting of 10 states, including Mizoram and Tripura, in New Delhi on January 8 to finalise the initiation of the scheme in these states.

The central government has given Rs.50 million to six northeastern states - Tripura, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya and Sikkim - to start the preparatory works before beginning the RMSA.

Chakraborty launched a weeklong Cholo Vidyalaya (march to school) programme in Tripura on Friday. He said, "Cholo Vidyalaya programme was launched three years back in Tripura under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)."

The minister said the number of boys and girls who never enrolled in schools in Tripura was 127,632 in 2001-02 but had come down to 2,865 now.

SSA seeks to open new schools in those habitations, which do not have schooling facilities and strengthen existing school infrastructure through provision of additional classrooms, toilets, drinking water, maintenance grant and school improvement grants. IANS