COIMBATORE: Ekal Vidyalaya Movement has plans of taking the Ekal schools (single teacher schools) to one lakh villages across the country by 2020, from the present 70,000, a senior functionary said on Saturday.

Inaugurating the Ekal Study Circle in the city, Central Executive Committee President of Ekal Abhiyan Bajrang Lal Bagra said the movement which was started in Jharkhand in 1988 has now spread all over India.

“It runs 70,224 informal primary education schools, out of which 68,237 are in 22 States and 1,987 in Nepal as on May 31 last,” Bagra said.

“The vision of the movement, involved in integrated and holistic development of rural and tribal India, is to reach one lakh by the end of the next year,” he said.

“The presence of such schools in remote village has succeeded in stopping supply chain and recruitment of Naxals,” he said adding that the extremists with the guns have all the possibility of killing the teachers and students, but were afraid, as the wards of their cadres were studying in the schools.

“Similar is the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, where more than 300 schools are running and there is no report of stone pelting incidents,” Bagra said.

Besides, the movement has taken nearly 50,000 farmers to organic farming in Odisha, which would be replicated in other villages, Bagra said.