Teaching-learning activities have taken a massive hit in government-run schools as teachers have been deployed in non-academic activities such as electoral roll revision and census work despite a Supreme Court ruling that teachers should not be tied up in such jobs during school hours.
After teachers, who were made booth-level officers only a month ago, completed a series of SIR activities, the Election Commission now wants them to undertake a special drive to include left-out voters.
On October 1, the commission wrote to the chief electoral officers (CEOs) of all states and Union Territories about the special drive. "Voter enrolment is a continuous process and any person not yet enrolled in the electoral roll or whose name has got deleted can apply for enrolment at any point of time. The objective of the special drive is to identify and facilitate such electors," said the poll panel's letter to the CEOs.
According to the letter, BLOs will compare the current electoral roll with the pre-SIR roll and prepare a list of voters whose names were there on the pre-SIR roll but are not included in the current one. The BLOs will make house-to-house visits to find such electors whose names are missing on the current roll. The process will be completed in a month.
The states have written to schools and teachers who worked as BLOs about this drive. A teacher from a government school in Cuttack, Odisha, said the revision process was started in October last year when the mapping of electors with the 2002 SIR list was done. The revision work gained pace since March this year when teachers worked relentlessly to complete the revision.
"In our school, there are six teachers. Two teachers have been assigned BLO duty and three teachers have got census duty. As BLOs, we could not do any teaching activities from March to August. Now, we have to do house-to-house surveys to verify each person whose name has been deleted. It means we cannot take any classes," said the teacher.
Teachers on census duty had to sidestep teaching when they were busy with house-listing activities. The second phase of the census is set to start soon, when they will visit houses to collect data through questions.
"The district administration says that election and census work are non-negotiable. They say other teachers would manage the additional (teaching) workload. But how many teachers are there in the school? All the schools are short-staffed. Teaching activities are severely affected," said the teacher.
As teachers in Delhi government schools were assigned SIR duty, educationists Rajesh Kumar Gogna and Ashok Agrawal filed a public interest litigation in Delhi High Court, arguing that such deployment was causing a massive loss of teaching for poor children.
A division bench of Delhi High Court comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia passed an order on July 28, citing a judgment of the Supreme Court that underscored the need to balance the right of the Election Commission and the mandate of the state to meet its obligation for providing education to children.
"There is no dispute as regards to the power of the Election Commission of India to requisition teachers for engaging them in election-related duties. However, having observed as above, the mandate of Section 27 of the Right to Education Act, 2009, cannot be lost sight of," the high court order said.
Ashok Agrawal said teachers are not being sent for SIR activities during school.
"In the states, the electoral officers and the local governments do not bother about disruption to teaching activities because the government schools have admitted children of the poor only. There should be pressure on them that they may engage non-teaching staff or teachers as per their convenience," Agrawal said.