 "Teachers on election duty violate 'right to education': Parents move HC")
The parents of a school-aged child have approached the Bombay High Court challenging the deployment of teachers for various election duties, arguing that it violates the children’s right to education, Livelaw reported on Friday.
EC deploys teachers as BLOs, PLOs
The parents have contested the circulars issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in view of the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections.
For the polls, the election body has deployed nearly 2,000 employees from the state’s Education Department, mostly teachers, as booth level officers (BLOs) and polling station officers (PSOs).
While the HC bench noted the contention of the parents that the poll process will impact the operations of the schools, it has directed the poll body to make a statement about it on Monday.
Absence of teachers disrupts education quality: Parents to HC
A division bench of Justices Atul Chandurkar and Rajesh Patil was hearing the parents' petition, which contends that the absence of teachers during school hours for election purposes disrupts the quality of education provided in the schools and is in gross violation of their right to education.
The issue surrounding the deployment of teachers in election activities is not new and has been debated in the past as well.
Maharashtra Assembly elections
Elections in Maharashtra will be held in a single phase on November 20. The counting of votes will be done on November 23, alongside the Jharkhand Assembly elections.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the Maharashtra government had issued a government resolution (GR) outlining the nature of the work of the teachers. The resolution followed after the government received several complaints from the teachers over being frequently burdened with non-educational work.
In its resolution, the state government clarified that the teachers have to take up work related to the decennial census, election work and disaster relief work, according to Section 27 of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act. The section prohibits the deployment of teachers for any other non-education purpose, other than the above mentioned activities.