In a significant step taken by the state, a group of ten students left on Monday for an educational tour of ISRO's Space Application Centre, Ahmedabad.

The state's Technical Education Minister Rajesh Dharmani flagged off a bus carrying the students to their destination in the presence of their parents and members of the district administration.

In January this year, the district administration inaugurated the Space Lab in the Boys School of Ghumarwin, in which models of various programmes being run by ISRO were installed.

The main focus of such programmes is to increase the interest of children studying in rural areas of the Bilaspur district towards science and to attract them towards space science, officials said.