Guwahati: Dispur on Wednesday started an online facility for teachers who wanted to opt for mutual transfer.

"We have launched an online system where schools with an excess and fewer number of teachers can opt for a transfer. Teachers working on contract and state pool can take a transfer to a school with fewer teachers. Now, there are 17,150 schools with more teachers and 22,367 schools with only a handful. This facility is only for inter-district transfer. Moreover, 509 women teachers who are now working in remote and sar areas will be replaced with men teachers. We will publish the list within March 15 and all the transfers will be completed within March 28. After that there will be no more transfers for this academic year," education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, inaugurating the system.

The transfer process began on January 22. Under the initiative, the education department issued transfer orders to 8,550 primary school teachers of the state.

The online process will provide a way for mutual transfers in January every year, Sarma said.

In the first phase, 3,904 teachers received an opportunity for inter-district mutual transfers and 4,646 teachers opted for intra-district mutual transfer.

Among regular posts, 1,196 got inter-district mutual transfer and 1,618 got intra-district transfer. In the contractual posts under Sarba Siksha Abhijan, 752 got the inter-district mutual transfer.

Altogether 1,956 teachers working under the state pool had got inter-district mutual transfer and 3,028 teachers, contractual and state pool, got intra-district mutual transfer.

"The process had started on January 22 and till February 7, 10,794 teachers applied for mutual transfer. After scrutinising we had published the first list on February 9 and from February 10 to 13, we had taken the grievances and in the past one week, after addressing all grievances, we have prepared the final list for this year, which includes 8,550 teachers' names," the education minister said.

Sarma said the government had also initiated a process to transfer teachers from schools with an excess number of teachers.

The education department had compiled the list of the schools based upon the report of the recent Gunotsav, an assessment drive carried out by the state government.