Cuttack, Feb. 15: The state government will integrate the process of getting children enrolled in schools under schemes implemented by the rural development, panchayati raj and labour departments "to provide incentives" to parents whose children have dropped out for financial reasons.

In an affidavit filed in Orissa High Court, school and mass education secretary Ranjana Chopra said: "The incentives would be given to parents (unorganised labourers) whose children are out of school from the corpus fund formed from the collection made at construction sites."

The court was hearing a PIL to achieve 100 per cent literacy in elementary education in the state. The affidavit was submitted in pursuance of an order issued on February 1.

Like every year, all primary and upper primary schools observe enrolment drives in the first week of April (beginning of the academic session). In the affidavit, Chopra said the special drive to enrol students would be undertaken along with the exercise of conducting the household survey 2016, which will start on March 1 and get over by June 30.

"After being enrolled, children will be provided with incentives such as midday meal, school uniform, study materials such as text books, etc," Chopra said in the affidavit.

The household survey will be conducted to identify all children in the age group of 1-14. Collectors of all districts have been asked to be ready with the module and format of survey by March 1. "A special survey will be conducted for tracking hard-to-reach children in urban areas such as Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Rourkela," Chopra said in the affidavit submitted on February 9.

The division bench of Justice Pradip Mohanty and Justice S.C. Parija has posted the matter to February 19.

The court had on December 18, 2015 made it clear that "it is the continuous obligation of the local authority to collect and maintain transparently and in public domain record of all the children. The court expected that "latest figures should be available by March 2016, particularly in respect of number of children out-of-school and their district-wise location".