New Delhi: With teachers juggling classrooms and election work for months, educators fear their continuing deployment could end up taking a toll on an entire academic year in some govt schools.What began as a time-bound exercise has stretched through crucial months of teaching, and with SIR-related work expected to continue till Dec, school heads say managing regular classes, examinations and evaluation alongside field duties is becoming increasingly difficult.“The entire academic year is getting affected,” said a govt school principal. “If teachers continue with this work till Dec and Census-related work begins after that, when the entire staff may again be involved, then when will teaching happen?”A large number of teachers serving as booth-level officers (BLOs) are balancing their regular school responsibilities with work related to Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Their duties have expanded further following a change in the verification process for voters who could not be traced or whose records showed discrepancies. BLOs will now have to visit such voters at their homes, collect the required documents and upload them for scrutiny by the electoral registration officer, rather than requiring these cases to be resolved through in-person hearings.According to the head of a school in northwest Delhi, teachers deployed for the exercise are now expected to remain engaged till Dec, although the work had initially been expected to conclude around Oct. He added that while officially the directions state that work has to be done “beyond school hours”, it was impossible to manage along with regular classes.“In my school, I have given them relaxation for half the day. They remain in school till around 11am and we schedule their periods accordingly. After that, they leave for this work,” he said. But elsewhere, he added, teachers are expected to remain in school until 1pm or 2pm before beginning field visits.“A teacher works in school till 11am, noon or even 2pm, then goes into the field and works there till 6pm or 7pm. After that, there is uploading work at night. They are doing this on Saturdays and Sundays as well,” the principal said, adding that the loss of even one teacher can be especially difficult at the senior secondary level, where a school may have only one person teaching a specialised subject.Another school head said 34 teachers from his school had earlier spent more than 40 days on full-time BLO duty. Even when teachers are asked to keep election work outside school hours, that boundary does not always hold. “They come to us at noon or 1pm and say they have to go to the field,” he said. “It is at the cost of studies.”School heads are also being drawn into the exercise. The northwest Delhi principal said 53 principals in his zone had recently been assigned SIR-related duties after a notification at the end of Sept.Meanwhile, teachers remain answerable both to their schools and to election officials. The northwest Delhi principal said some school heads who resisted relieving teachers for election work had received show-cause notices.
