The State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) has opposed the deployment of teachers as booth-level officers (BlOs) by the State Chief Electoral Officer, claiming that it was prohibited under the Right to Education Act (2009).
SCPCR chairperson Ajay Setia said, “The deployment of teachers as BlOs violates Section 27 of the RTE Act. As per the law the teachers cannot be deployed for non-educational purposes other than decennial population census, disaster relief and elections to the local bodies, State legislature and the Parliament."
In this context Setia recently wrote a letter to the chief electoral officer Radha Raturi stating that District Magistrates and Sub Divisional Magistrates were using the letters written by the CEO in 2008 and 2010 as a pretext for engaging teachers as BlOs.
He said that according to the Supreme Court judgement, teachers can be deployed on the days of elections and on the days of counting only and all other duties relating to roll revisions, as per the judgement, can be performed by the teachers on holidays only.
He also said that summons regarding this problem were served to the SDMs of Rudrapur, Ranikhet and Haldwani.
SDMs of Ranikhet and Haldwani have assured that they will withdraw the teachers from BlO duties while the Rudrapur SDM said that he will follow the instruction of the CEO, he added.
He said that the first duty of teachers is to teach and if the teachers are deployed on BlO duties, it would mean they will be away from the teaching job for a period of one month which violates the norms under the RTE Act.
“Under section 27 of the RTE Act it is mandatory for the teachers to conduct teaching on 220 days a year,” Setia said. It is pertinent to mention here that the level of education in government schools has suffered due to factors like teachers being deployed for various non-educational works by the authorities.