Tribal students set out on foot from Nashik’s Idgah Maidan on Monday, September 28, for Raj Bhavan in Mumbai, about 180 km away. The Sakal Adivasi Vidyarthi Andolan Kruti Samiti, which organised the march, wants Tribal Development Minister Dr Ashok Uike to resign and the state to overhaul how it runs ashram schools and tribal hostels, Saamana reported. Organisers plan to reach Mumbai around October 5, according to TV9 Marathi.
A month of protest in Nashik came first
The march grows out of a sit-in at the Idgah ground that had passed 31 days by mid-September, Pudhari reported. Part of that stretch included an indefinite hunger strike, which students called off after about two weeks to shift the fight to Mumbai. By then the demands had widened. Besides Uike, the students want Tribal Development Secretary Vijay Waghmare and Commissioner Leena Bansode removed, the Free Press Journal reported.
The trigger, according to the Free Press Journal, was a set of government resolutions issued in early August on tribal hostels and ashram schools. Students objected to new age limits for staying in hostels and to conditions they described as demeaning for girl students. Uike met a delegation in September. Pudhari reported that the talks went nowhere, and that the minister told students the department’s roughly Rs 21,000 crore budget also has to fund other departments’ work.
What the students are asking for
- Resignation of Minister Ashok Uike and removal of the department’s secretary and commissioner.
- Scrapping the central kitchen system, which trucks cooked meals to ashram schools from shared kitchens. Students say the food arrives poor in quality.
- Compensation for families of students who died in hostels and schools. Saamana lists Rs 1 crore per death and Rs 50 lakh for the injured, citing snakebite cases in Gadchiroli.
- An impartial probe into alleged molestation of girl students at a Gadchiroli ashram school, The Wire reported.
- An end to donations demanded from students, faster DBT payments, and higher student allowances.
The protesters’ most serious charge concerns deaths. They cite close to 600 deaths of students in tribal ashram schools and hostels over two years; the Free Press Journal reported the figure as 593 and Pudhari as 584. Both counts come from the organisers.
Who depends on these schools
Ashram schools are residential schools the state runs or funds for Scheduled Tribe children, many of them from remote hamlets in Nashik, Nandurbar, Palghar, Gadchiroli and Amravati. For many families, the hostel is the only realistic route to a Class 10 certificate. Food, safety and staffing inside these campuses shape whether a child from a Surgana or Peth village stays in school.
Nashik has sent marchers to Mumbai before. In March 2018, the Kisan Long March walked roughly the same route, reached Azad Maidan, and got the state to accept most farmer demands in writing. In 2023 a similar farmers’ march stopped near Vasind after ministers negotiated on the road. Those marches asked for policy changes. This one names a sitting minister and two senior officers, which makes a written assurance harder for the government to offer.
What to watch
Motorists on the Nashik to Mumbai highway, including the Kasara ghat stretch, should expect slow patches this week wherever the column is on the road. Students have said they will not stop short of Mumbai, so the next marker is whether the Chief Minister’s office calls them for talks before they reach Thane district. Students have asked to meet the Chief Minister directly. Watch also for any move to revisit the August resolutions, which would address part of the grievance without the resignations organisers want.
Sources: Saamana, Free Press Journal, Pudhari, The Wire, TV9 Marathi
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.