The panchayat elections have spoiled the holiday plans of most of the Government teachers. These elections are being held on June 18, 21 and 24 and as teachers form the biggest chunk of Government employees drawn for election duties it means their summer vacation this time would be spent in the heat and dust of the elections.
The education department with 1.20 lakh employees and 75,000 teachers is the biggest manpower contributor to the election commission for conducting elections. The teachers are drawn in various capacities as per their grade for election duties. The summer vacation in the State started on May 25 but most of the teachers were asked not to leave their schools so that the duties can be assigned to them.
Those assigned the election duty would be given three-day training from June 10 and one election party each would conduct the polls in the three stages of the elections on June 18, 21 and 24.
The teachers are not happy with the scenario in which they will have to conduct poll duties during the time of their summer holidays. One such teacher blamed the State Government for delaying the elections.
"These elections were slated in September last year but the State Government took the plea and extended them for six months, they further took the matter to the High Court to postpone them further and after much delay these elections are being held in June," he said.
Another teacher said that he had to cancel his plan to go to Bangalore with his family which irritated the kids as their holiday plans were disturbed.
The elections in the three-tier panchayat bodies of the State would be held in three stages in 12 districts, 89 blocks and 7,657 village panchayats. A total of 46,94,689 voters out of which 23,13,900 are female and 23,77,103 male voters would use their franchise in this election. They would elect 49,337 members of village panchayats, 7,657 village pradhans, 3,054 members of block panchayats and 389 members of district panchayat.
The nomination for these polls would start on Monday (June 2); the scrutiny of the nomination papers would be on June 6, 7 and 9 while June 10 is the date for withdrawal of the nomination papers. Symbols would be allotted on June 11 and the counting would start at 8 am on June 27. The election commission has set up 8,387 polling centres and 10,516 polling booths for the panchayat elections.