Bhubaneswar, Feb. 4: Teachers of the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas in the state have decided to begin an indefinite strike to push for their demand to include them in the Central Civil Services pension scheme.

More than 1,200 teaching and non-teaching staff of Odisha’s 31 residential Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs), which are run by the Centre, will not go to work from February 6 until their demands are met. The proposed strike would hit nearly 16,000 students, 4,000 of whom will sit for their CBSE Class X and XII board exams from March 1.

Though the DAV School at CDA in Cuttack is the exam centre for Class X and XII board candidates, most Class X examinees are scheduled to appear for internal assessments (as opposed to CBSE pattern of exams) in their own schools.

“We are confused and nervous. We don’t know where our exams will take place,” said Megha Singh, Class X student of a JNV in Cuttack.

School authorities, on the other hand, have decided to send students back home. “Since there will be no classes, there is no point in staying on the campus. Their preparations for exams will, no doubt, be hampered since this is the time for revision, extra classes and mock tests. But the Centre’s continued neglect of our demands has forced us to take this step,” said Pradipta Pal, a senior teacher of JNV at Mundali, Cuttack.

The employees of the JNVs had earlier gone on a “mass casual leave” to protest against the Centre’s alleged neglect to their demands for implementation of Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1972 and 10 per cent special allowance for non-teaching staff.

They claimed that other than JNVs, employees of all educational institutions under the Union ministry of human resource development were entitled to pension benefits. The institutes include the Centre-run Kendriya Vidyalayas, National Institutes of Open Schooling, National Council of Educational Research and Training and Central Board of Secondary Education.