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Ranchi, Dec. 14: A scenic locale, a glittering alumni and an unparalleled history of quality education. Yet, the popularity of Sainik School, Tilaiya, seems to be on the wane.

If numbers are anything to go by, the Sainik School is losing out on applicants for entrance tests conducted for Class VI and Class IX students.

The number of applicants, which soared over 10,000 each year during the days of unified Bihar, has drastically come been reduced to only around 2,000 in the recent past.

Sources at the Sainik School told The Telegraph that there were only about 1,800 applicants for the 2007-07 academic session, while the numbers pushed up marginally for the coming session. About 2,500 candidates have applied for a total of 140 seats, including 120 for Class VI and 20 for Class IX. Sources further said the slight increase this year has been triggered by an aggressive campaign through both the print and the electronic media. But the dividends aren’t as high as were expected.

“The deadline for application in the next session expired on December 10. We have not received a good response this year as well. Only about nine students would appear for the tests in the Chaibasa centre whereas the Jamshedpur centre would have only 30 students,” one of the sources said. As a result, the institution is mulling options of cutting down on the number of test centres, courtesy the dip in the number of applicants each year.

The school is also planning to rope in teachers from Delhi to train the students for engineering and medical entrance tests in tune with other public schools in the state.

Registrar of the school Squadron Leader S. A. Tawab feels that two new Sainik Schools in Bihar (at Rajgir and Gopalganj), which have been functional since the last two years have effected in the low turnout of candidates for the Tilaiya institution.

Besides, the annual scholarship given by the Bihar government to the students in Rajgir and Gopalganj is somewhere around Rs 25,000, while the students of Tilaiya are awarded about Rs 5,000 only.

According to the terms of the Sainik School Society, 67 per cent of the seats are reserved for local students, while the rest (33 per cent) are ought to be filled by students from outside the states. For the Jharkhand institution, the outsiders’ quota was mostly filled up by the Bihar students, who now seem to have deserted Tilaiya and moved to the schools closer home.