Gurdaspur administration withdraws order to depute school teachers at distilleries

The Gurdaspur district administration on Thursday withdrew an order to depute 24 government school teachers at distilleries and breweries to "keep a tab on the supply of alcohol", following severe criticism from opposition parties and teachers' associations.

District Education Officer (Secondary) Hardeep Singh said the order, which was issued on Wednesday, had been withdrawn.

The May 20 order had directed the teachers to provide details of alcohol supply at four distilleries -- AB Grains Spirit Pvt limited, Chadha Sugar and Inds limited unit - I and II, and Adie Broswon Breweries -- located in Batala in a prescribed format to a nodal officer.

Duty slots of 6 am to 2 pm, 2 pm to 10 pm and 10 pm to 6 am were fixed for them.

Opposition parties Shiromani Akali Dal and Aam Aadmi Party had dubbed it "highly shameful".

Democratic Teachers' Front (Punjab) president Davinder Singh Punia had also condemned the order.

"Highly Shameful!! After Nakas, Mandis, teachers' 247 deployment at Distilleries 2 monitor supply of Liquor clearly shows regressive mindset of @capt_amarinder g's Govt towards Nation-Builders. Govt.must roll back it's insensitive orders," AAP MLA Aman Arora said in a tweet.

SAD leader and former education minister Daljit Singh Cheema had also hit out at the state government over the order.

"Nothing can be more shameful than this order. Teachers command important position in society and students respect them a lot. It is beyond our imagination what kind of message the state government intends to pass on with such order," he had said, demanding the order be withdrawn immediately.

Notably, on May 16, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had directed the police department to crack down on all kinds of liquor smuggling, bootlegging and illicit distillation of liquor to prevent revenue loss to the state exchequer.