Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke on Wednesday launched the ‘Adivasi School Thik Karo’ (Fix Tribal Schools) campaign, drawing attention to alleged government apathy after three tribal children died of snakebites at a government-aided ashramshala in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli last month.
CJP leader Dipke said the Fix Tribal Schools campaign is set to kick off in Gadchiroli on September 17. The initiative comes amid widespread hunger strikes by students across Maharashtra’s tribal belt and strong intervention by the Bombay high court.
A division bench comprising acting chief justice Ravindra Ghuge and justice Gautam Ankhad issued stern directions to the state government to safeguard students, emphasising that “no more young lives should be lost”. The bench took notice of the youth-led protests.
“Over the last 80 years, successive governments-regardless of political banner-have turned a blind eye to tribal education,” Dipke said, condemning what he termed institutional negligence and deep-seated discrimination.
The CJP chief said, “Political parties spend crores of rupees constructing lavish district headquarters, yet claim they lack the funds to fix tribal residential schools operating out of cramped, rented properties,” drawing a sharp contrast between political priorities and grassroots realities.
CJP representatives will fan out across Gadchiroli from Thursday to conduct ground-level inspections of infrastructure, safety standards and living conditions in these remote institutions for tribal students. The drive expands upon CJP’s broader nationwide ‘School Thik Karo’ campaign aimed at upgrading public education.
Dipke said that more than 590 tribal students have died in Maharashtra over the past two years alone, many of them due to snakebites. Similar fatalities have recently been reported in neighbouring states, including more than 30 tribal deaths in Madhya Pradesh’s Balaghat district within two months, along with casualties in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
“If these tragedies had occurred in premier schools in Mumbai or Pune, the entire nation would be in an uproar,” Dipke said. “Instead, these children die in silence, and their grieving families are dismissed with insultingly nominal compensation-in some states, as meagre as a couple of goats.”
The campaign chief also called out broader systemic failures across the country, saying key initiatives such as the Eklavya Model Residential Schools were crumbling, with 477 out of 720 sanctioned facilities currently non-functional. He added that higher education enrolment among tribal students remained stagnant at just 22.8%.
He also claimed that only 130 Scheduled Tribe (ST) applicants secured admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), highlighting severe pipeline gaps and faculty underrepresentation.
Questioning the national narrative of rapid development, Dipke urged leaders to look beyond macroeconomic figures.
“Boasting a 7.8% GDP growth rate or chasing a $5 trillion economy means nothing if we abandon our vulnerable rural and indigenous youth,” he said, adding, “Students in tribal belts possess immense potential. They deserve the exact same dignity, safety, and quality of education as children in major metros.”