Chandigarh, Jan. 7 -- Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to chief secretaries about the availability of girls' toilets in schools, the Centre has asked the state governments and Union territories to take immediate steps to ensure functional toilets for girls in all schools across the country. In a letter to the chief secretaries of states and UTs last week, the Union ministry of education requested them to draw up and implement a suitable action plan to "saturate the availability of girls' toilets in all the girls and co-educational schools" before March 8, which is observed worldwide as International Women's Day. According to the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) report for 2024-25, 97.3% of the 14.71 lakh schools in the country have girls' toilets on their premises. However, 39,729 or about 2.7% of these do not have toilet facilities for girl students. PM Modi, while chairing the 5th National Conference of Chief Secretaries in New Delhi on December 27 about issues related to governance and reforms, emphasised the need to ensure the availability of toilet facilities for girls in all schools across the country Punjab has a total of 27,104 all-management girls and co-educational schools, of which 379 are running without proper toilet facilities for girl students. While 188 schools lack separate toilets for girls, 191 schools have toilets that are not functional. These are mostly co-educational primary and upper primary schools run by the state government or private unaided recognised schools. Gurdaspur, Rupnagar and Patiala have the highest number of such schools, according to UDISE+ data released by the Union education ministry in August 2025. When asked about schools with no toilets, an official of Punjab's school education department said the state government has been consistently working on improving physical infrastructure in schools, including toilets and other facilities. "Our Sikhya Kranti campaign last year was also focused on improving basic amenities in all schools," said the official, who did not wish to be identified. Union secretary for school education and literacy Sanjay Kumar, in his letter to chief secretaries on December 31, said that the issue of schools lacking toilets is a significant problem, particularly impacting girls' education and health. "Many schools have unusable or non-existent facilities, leading to dropouts, infections and missed school days," he wrote, sharing district-wise and block-wise data on schools that do not separate toilets for girl students or lack functional ones. "Your leadership and oversight in the matter would help fulfil the achievement of cent percent schools having girls' toilets as underlined by Hon'ble Prime Minister in the national conference," he added....