West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari is scheduled to distribute Sarathi bicycles to students from Howrah’s Madhusudan Pal Chowdhury High School on Tuesday, marking the first distribution under the renamed scheme in the state, according to Sangbad Pratidin – Bengal. The Chief Minister is also expected to have lunch with students in the school’s mid-day meal room.
The event has prompted administrative and security preparations at the 140-year-old school in Bhyatara, Howrah. Howrah District Magistrate P. Deepap Priya and Police Commissioner Akhilesh Kumar Chaturvedi inspected the arrangements on Monday morning, a day before the scheduled visit.
The school serves students from Class V to Class XII and has approximately 1,200 students. A large number of Sarathi bicycles were reportedly stored in one of the school’s rooms on Monday, while a pandal was also being erected on the premises for the programme.
According to headmaster Tanmoy Chakraborty, the school was selected because of its infrastructure and its mid-day meal facility. He said the administration had informed the school that the Chief Minister had chosen the venue after considering its facilities. The school has developed a dedicated meal room in the style of an ashram, at a reported cost of approximately Rs 2.5 lakh, with seating capacity for 50 students at a time.
The meal facility is used by students from Classes V to VIII. The school headmaster said that around 400 students are able to eat there each day, either seated or standing, indicating that the room is being used to manage a substantially larger daily student meal operation than its stated seating capacity.
The bicycle distribution is also part of a wider change in the state’s student assistance programme. The report said the scheme previously known as Sabuj Sathi under the Trinamool Congress government was renamed Sarathi after the BJP government came to power, with the bicycle colour changed from green to orange.
For students, bicycle distribution schemes can affect how they travel to school, particularly where public transport is limited or distances are difficult to cover on foot. The supplied report does not provide the number of bicycles to be distributed at the Howrah event, the eligibility criteria, or the state-wide rollout schedule for the renamed programme.
The Chief Minister’s visit and the distribution programme are scheduled for Tuesday. The school administration had begun preparations on Monday, with security checks and venue arrangements being completed ahead of the planned event.
