Even as the State Government has been sitting on the old demands of the agitating Block Grant teachers, including framing a grant-in-aid policy with service conditions and due salary, the Education Department has virtually declared an emergency and cracked whip against lecturers as CHSE evaluation continues to evoke a lukewarm response.
As per earlier claim by Mass Education Minister Badri Narayan Patra, the lecturers in the degree colleges have been appointed as evaluators for the Plus answer scripts to meet the huge shortfall of evaluators created by the boycott by the Block Grant lecturers. Now, although the degree lecturers are not acquainted with the Plus II course casting a shadow on proper evaluation, what holds the Education department on the tenterhooks is the skipping of large numbers of lecturers assigned for the job. Consequently, the Directorate of Higher Education has cracked the whip and asked the Presidents of the Governing Body of the degree colleges to take disciplinary action against the erring lecturers.
Again, the desperate move of the Education Department is proved by letters issued to the authorities of the private aided colleges. In fact, it is the lecturers of these colleges who have been on holding demonstrations at the valuation zones after boycotting the work. But their colleagues, who are receiving full GIA, whether in Plus II or degree streams, are deployed without considering the cleavages and ill-feelings created among the teaching fraternity.
“I have not received any letter of appointment from the CHSE for the evaluation work. But on direction of my Principal I came here and inquired if I have been assigned for the job fearing disciplinary action. And, I got to know that I was appointed,” said a degree college lecturer at the Dhenkanal Autonomous College CHSE zone. Many lecturers said though they had come to join the evaluation works, they skipped it showing solidarity for the case of their colleagues on Block Grant scale.