Calcutta, Aug. 5: It won’t any more be an instance of wardrobe malfunction if a government school teacher goes to work in a salwar kameez or a pair of jeans.

The government today issued a circular asking heads of all state-aided schools to allow women teachers to wear salwar kameez, the most popular dress among working Indian women, and the male teachers to wear denims.

Even though there is no official dress code for teachers, wearing saris is an unofficial must for ladies.

The circular comes in the wake of reports that several schools, run by people with highly conservative and out-of-sync sartorial preferences, are preventing teachers from wearing salwar kameez or jeans.

“There is an increasing demand from young teachers that they be allowed to wear salwaar kameez to school. The government will not allow a teacher to wear indecent or revealing dresses to the workplace. But we are making it clear to the schools that no teacher should be harassed if she wants to attend work in a decent dress, be it a sari or a salwar kameez,” school education minister Kanti Biswas said this afternoon.

The government’s silence over the unlawful bar on teachers’ dresses had often given the impression that it seconded it. Today’s order is the first that officially asks institutions to be liberal with their sartorial outlook.

Biswas said: “We will start sending the circulars tomorrow. The order will be in effect immediately after.”

The schools will, however, enjoy the power to take action against a teacher if he or she wears an “indecent dress” to school.

But young teachers are already celebrating the new lease of liberty. “The school authorities had unnecessarily harassed us for so many years by following a meaningless conventional dress code. We are happy that the government has finally intervened,” said a teacher of a school in Ballygunge. She was once asked not to wear salwar kameez to work.

Headmistress of Beltala Girls’ School Ila Bhattacharya said she had no objection to the circular but, “ideally”, she would like teachers to attend classes in saris.

Teachers from across the state had written to the School Service Commission complaining about the school managing committees’ insistence on saris to school. The commission had asked several schools to consider the demand of teachers.