Guj fares below national average in literacy test for adults

Gujarat's performance in the latest round of basic literacy test for adults under the Saakshar Bharat Abhiyan programme has been below national average but West Bengal's show has been the poorest.
The results of the test shows that 69.58 candidates from Gujarat passed the test against the national average of 73.49 per cent.
About 39 lakh people were added to India's 1.4 crore neo-literate population in the last three years since the Saakshar Bharat programme was first launched.
The number of successful candidates from Gujarat stood at 1,25,378.
The national-level literacy programme aims to impart functional literacy to non-literates in the age group of 15-35 years in a time bound manner.

The programme has won the UNESCO award recently.

As per the results, 42.10 per cent from West Bengal could only pass the test as against states such as neighbouring Bihar where the pass percentage was 86.43 and Odisha at 66.57 per cent. About 2.31 lakh candidate passed out successfully.
West Bengal, however, saw maximum number of adults from the minority community appearing for the test at 1.84 lakh with 47.39 per cent passing out successfully.
The revised definition of a literate requires an adult to attend about 300 hours of learning to ensure that the person can do simple arithmetic with working knowledge of metric units and broad idea of proportions and interest, read road signs and simple instructions.

The result showed that over 90 per cent candidates from Delhi passed the test. 762 of the 916 candidates who appeared in Tihar Jail here passed the exam.