The education department’s action on Block Resource Coordinators (BRC) and Cluster Resource Coordinators (CRC) of Haridwar district has put it in confrontation with the largest and most powerful teacher organisation. The biggest organisation of government teacher, the Prathmik Shikshak Sangh (PSS) has threatened to launch an agitation against the department’s action, which it terms as unwarranted harassment. The PSS has convened a meeting of the state body at Dehradun on October 10 to discuss the issue. On the orders of Director General (DG) of school education, D Senthil Pandian, the department conducted extensive inspections of the government school of Haridwar last week. The DG after analysing the reports of inspecting teams suspended the BRC of Bahadrabad for appointing a proxy teacher.
The DG also ordered that all the BRC and CRC of the district should be relieved from their duties and report to their respective schools. The BRC and CRC are the administrative and academic support positions of the education department and usually influential teachers get themselves deputed to these posts.
The action of DG evoked sharp response from the Haridwar district unit of PSS. The district unit observed a one mass casual leave on Saturday. As a retaliatory measure the department officials inspected many schools on the day of agitation and initiated action against the absentee teachers.
The General Secretary of PSS, Digvijay Singh Chauhan told The Pioneer that the organisation would not tolerate the harassment of teachers. He questioned the propriety of taking action against all BRC and CRC of the district. “I fail to understand as to how all the 72 BRC and CRC were found incompetent by the department. It could have taken action against some of them but one sweeping action against all of them is nothing but a harassment which would be protested by the teaching community,” Singh said. The PSS leader said that the district unit of PSS had informed about its plan for the mass casual leave to the department officials and department’s action against these agitated teachers is unwarranted. Undeterred by the teachers anger the DG ordered all the education department officers to lodge cases against the teachers found absconding from their duties as absconding amounts to disruption of government work, infringement of universal Right to Education (RTE), amounts to violating Supreme court ruling on Mid Day Meal (MDM), disruption of departmental policy and violation of teachers service conduct rules. It is learnt that the DG has got tactic support of State Chief Minister Harish Rawat who too is interested to rein in the government teachers of the state to improve the academic environment in the schools of the state.