A Congress Lok Sabha member on Monday questioned the engagement of primary school teachers in the SIR drive and the resultant disruption in studies, prompting the Centre to shift the onus to the state governments.

While the SIR has been recently conducted in 10 states and three Union Territories, pre-revision activities are underway in 17 states and five UTs. The pre-revision exercise involves training booth-level officers, house-to-house voter verification and preparation and distribution of enumeration forms. Schoolteachers and anganwadi workers are deployed by the state governments for these activities.

Congress MP Imran Masood wanted to know if adequate steps had been taken to ensure that regular teaching work was not disrupted by the deployment of primary school teachers for SIR-related activities and whether the government planned to replace regular teachers with contractual ones for election-related work.

In a written reply, minister of state for education Jayant Chaudhary avoided a direct reply, saying the state governments and UT administrations handled the deployment of teachers.

“Education is a subject in the Concurrent List of the Constitution and the majority of schools are under the administrative control of the respective state governments and Union Territory administrations. Matters relating to deployment of teachers, including for election-related duties, fall within the administrative domain of the concerned State/UT governments,” Chaudhary said.

The minister cited Section 27 of the Right to Education (RTE) Act that allows deployment of teachers for the decennial population census, disaster relief and poll duties.

Chaudhary also cited a 2007 Supreme Court judgment that upheld the EC’s authority to requisition teachers for election-related duties. The top court had observed that the functioning of schools should not be impacted by the deployment.

“Accordingly, the ministry of education has issued guidelines dated September 13, 2010, to all states and Union Territories vide which, inter alia, it has been provided that duties relating to electoral roll revisions will be undertaken by teachers on holidays and during non-teaching hours and non-teaching days. The same is reiterated to all states/UTs from time to time,” Chaudhary said.

Sanjeeb Mohanty, a social activist from Puri, said the normal functioning of schools was hampered by the deployment of teachers for pre-revision activities.

“In Puri district, most of the primary schools have teacher vacancies. A handful of teachers take care of the teaching-learning activities. Many teachers have personally shared their trauma about handling the pressure related to pre-revision activities. This is worsening the education delivery in government schools,” Mohanty said.