BENGALURU: Education Minister Madhu Bangarappa on Friday called for school teachers to be exempted from Special Intensive Revision (SIR) duties in the state. He also announced that he intends to introduce a bill to enforce the exemption in a future legislative session.
Bangarappa said, “Although we wrote to the Election Commission of India (ECI) stating that children’s education is being severely hampered, there is no response. The ECI is acting without any sense of humanity.”
Bangarappa also stated that he is planning on introducing a bill that would potentially safeguard the state’s school teachers from being deployed for tasks besides teaching.
“Such a situation must not recur. To ensure children receive quality education in schools, the practice of utilising teachers for non-teaching tasks must stop. We intend to place it before the cabinet and introduce the bill during a future legislative session,” Bangarappa said, while acknowledging that the deployment of government employees for election duties could, at times, be unavoidable.
Several complaints from schoolchildren, their parents and multiple reports of schools being left without teachers and children being sent home after the midday meals have arisen, to which Bangarappa said he intended to put a stop. The minister added that Ashutosh Ranka from the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) met him and shared the same concern about teachers being deployed for SIR duty.