– Ronita Torcato
Schools across Maharashtra reopened after the summer vacation, many with skeletal staff, as over 1,000 teachers, including retirees, have been roped in for poll duty in the upcoming local body elections.
Titled Booth Level Officers (BLO) the teachers primary duty involves updating voter lists In areas near their schools where they must visit residential premises to update voter information.
One such school is the Sarvodaya Vidya Mandir in suburban Malad where all 18 teachers from the secondary section have been given election responsibilities; consequently, all of the teachers were forced to abstain from classroom duty on the first day of the new academic year.
Interestingly four teachers who had retired from the school, also received duty letters.
“Many of us had worked in the election office for over 11 years and were eventually relieved from that responsibility. But this time, all 18 teachers as well as 10 non-teaching staff have received fresh orders from the election authority,” a teacher from the school said, adding “We were shocked to receive these letters, especially as the new academic year has just begun.”
The teachers are concerned about the impact of their absence on students and lamented that the commencement-of-year activities like planning sessions, student orientation, and distribution of materials have been postponed.
The school management has written to the education department requesting modification of the orders as there are over 700 students on the rolls and with the increasing workload it is impossible to function with reduced staff.
Teachers clarified that they are not opposed to the work itself, as election and census duties are non-academic tasks they are expected to perform. “But assigning all the teachers from a single school to election duty is not practical,” said a teacher.
A school education department official points out that there is no exemption from election and census duties for teachers. Quizzed about the Malad school vacuum, he said he was unaware of the case and acknowledged “it should be looked into.”
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