Nitish to meet ruling alliance leaders today to discuss teachers’ issues

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar will meet the leaders of the state’s ruling alliance Mahagathbandhan constituents on Saturday to discuss the issues of school teachers, who have been demanding government employee status without any exam rider and requisite changes in the Bihar state school teachers (appointment, transfer, disciplinary action, and service condition) rules, 2023, under which the government plans to carry out future appointments under a new cadre.

State’s parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, during the monsoon session of the state legislature last month, had promised in the House that the CM would review the new rules and talk to leaders of alliance parties.

Angry over some provisions in the new rules, government school teachers have been staging protests. Last months, their protest in Patna had even turned violent.

“The meeting will happen on August 5. I have delivered on my promise. The CM will listen to the views of all alliance leaders. Deputy CM Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, education minister Chandrashekhar, who has now started attending his office, and the leaders of the Congress and Left parties, besides officials of the education department, will be present. We will try to resolve the matters, as these are our teachers,” Choudhary said.

The meeting assumes importance, as the government would not like to upset a strong force of around four lakh teachers ahead of parliamentary elections next year, especially when the BJP is throwing its weight behind them and had also taken out march to the state assembly to champion their cause.

The new recruitment rules have already witnessed several changes, including the removal of domicile requirement to be a teacher. It also led to agitations and chief secretary Amir Subhani had to come forward to clarify that there was no domicile requirement even during the previous recruitment of teachers carried out by the BIhar Public Service Commission (BPSC) in 1994, 1999 and 2000.

Under the new rules, the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) has already moved ahead with its exercise for conducting examinations, scheduled on August 24-27, to recruit 1.70 -lakh teachers.

The government wants to complete the exercise by the end of the year, as secondary schools have been working without adequate strength despite their upgradation to higher secondary level nearly a decade.

However, the number of applicants for higher secondary schools received by the BPSC is still lower than the number of seats available and the last date for submission has ended. The working teachers mostly stayed away from applying under the new rules.

Bihar Secondary Teachers’ Association president Shatrughan Prasad Singh said the chief minister talking to ruling alliance leaders on teachers’ genuine issues was a positive indication. “We hope the meeting will set the tone for agreement with teachers’ bodies to break the impasse. The demands of the teachers has got the backing of the ruling constituents also,” he added.