The Bihar government suspended one of the contractual teachers, who had passed away two years ago, on the charge of not evaluating an Intermediate examinations answer copies.
In Bihar, lakhs of contractual teachers have gone on strike since February 17. Their main demands include regularisation of their service and pay scale equivalent to those teachers who got a regular employment decades ago.
As a consequence, the evaluation work of the Intermediate answer-sheets has been badly affected with a majority of the teachers boycotting the evaluation exercise.
It was against this backdrop that the District Education Officer (DEO) of Begusarai issued suspension orders for all those teachers who had been boycotting evaluation work. One such suspended teacher was Ranjit Kumar Yadav, who passed away two years back.
The suspension order said Yadav was supposed to evaluate the answer sheets at Begusarai but he failed to turn up at the examination centre. As such, he was being suspended till further orders.
When the issue of suspension of a dead teacher was brought to the notice of the Assistant Director of the Education Department Amit Kumar, he said, “We will look into the matter.”
Meanwhile, thousands of contractual teachers staged demonstration in Patna on Tuesday and ‘begged’ near Mahavir Mandir, sitting along with other beggars.
“Altogether 76,000 schools in Bihar are closed due to our strike. We will not end our agitation till our demands are met,” said Brajnandan Sharma, the general secretary of the Contractual Teachers’ Coordination Committee.