NEW DELHI: National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), has batted for simultaneous polls, proposed by the Narendra Modi government, saying that lesser number of poll days will help in bettering the implementation of Right to Education Act for schoolchildren, as elections mean loss of almost 10 days in a poll year.
The NCPCR’s recommendations based on a research, which have been sent to Om Prakash Rawat, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), have argued that teachers should not be deployed as booth-level officers, as this is extra work and severely hampers their work in schools.
“Children get two kinds of resources from states, school buildings and teachers, and both these resources get disturbed during elections,” said Priyank Kanoongo, NCPCR member (education).
“We therefore feel that one nation-one election will be beneficial for schools as it will cause least interference in educational activities.”
NCPCR cited that Section 27 of RTE Act, 2009 says that schoolteachers cannot be involved with anything other than state and Lok Sabha elections, census and disaster relief works, but its reviews have shown teachers being intermittently involved in election-related work, is coming in way of successful implementation of the Act.
The NCPCR had asked the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration to prepare a report on the impact of elections on school education in 2017, which showed that in 2015-16, 15.14 per cent teachers in India’s 14.67 lakh schools doubled up as booth-level officials.
The idea of simultaneous polls will be “immensely beneficial for schoolgoing children in the country,” Kanoongo said.
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