New Delhi: With teachers juggling classrooms and election work for months, educators fear their continuing deployment could end up taking a toll on an entire academic year in some govt schools.
Another school head said 34 teachers from his school had earlier spent more than 40 days on full-time BLO duty.
“They come to us at noon or 1pm and say they have to go to the field,” he said. The northwest Delhi principal said some school heads who resisted relieving teachers for election work had received show-cause notices. A large number of teachers serving as booth-level officers (BLOs) are balancing their regular school responsibilities with work related to Election Commission ’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Their duties have expanded further following a change in the verification process for voters who could not be traced or whose records showed discrepancies. BLOs will now have to visit such voters at their homes, collect the required documents and upload them for scrutiny by the electoral registration officer, rather than requiring these cases to be resolved through in-person hearings. Even when teachers are asked to keep election work outside school hours, that boundary does not always hold. “It is at the cost of studies. Meanwhile, teachers remain answerable both to their schools and to election officials.