India, Sept. 2 -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Centre to ensure that all tribal and rural areas have separate girls toilets even as the government stated that gender-segregated toilets remain to be constructed in only 4,745 schools out of the 1.4 million schools in the country.

Figures submitted by the Union government to the court indicated that according to the last survey conducted in 2024-25 under the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), out of a total of 1.47 million schools, 97.3% of schools were reported to have functional girls' toilets.

Pursuant to the top court's order of January 30 this year holding menstrual hygiene to be a fundamental right, the matter was taken up by the Centre with...