NAGPUR: The member of legislative council
Nago Ganar (teachers' constituency) has demanded that a criminal case be filed against education department officials responsible for missing files pertaining to teachers' hiring.
TOI had reported in December itself that crucial files pertaining to teachers' appointments were missing and subsequently an internal inquiry was ordered. On Thursday evening, a delegation led by Ganar met deputy director of education Anil
Pardhi and discussed various other issues related to the appointments and salaries.
Ganar and his team also raised the issue of teachers whose payments had been stopped for administrative reasons. Speaking to TOI, Pardhi said, "All concerns of the MLC have been noted and we will ask our department to look into it."
Puja Choudhari, member of Maharashtra Rajya Shikshak Parishad, was part of the delegation that met Pardhi. "Another issue discussed was that salaries of principals were stopped because they did not give permission to new teachers from the excess pool to join in vacant positions. We demanded that all salaries should be started immediately and the official procedures to deal with the issue can continue," said Ganar.
The missing file issue first came to the fore when social activist
Vijay Gupta procured certain documents under
RTI. Gupta alleged that the files have been deliberately misplaced to cover-up a hiring scam. According to him, the scam started in 2012 when a hiring freeze was put in place. Gupta said, "School trustees and education department seem to have conspired and taken bribes from these teachers and added them to the payroll." He added that teachers first start off as shikshan sevaks with a fixed stipend (ranging from Rs4,000-8,000 per month), for three years.
"Rules state that after completion of three years, the school can regularize them by hiring as a full-time teacher. However, education officials in Nagpur have allowed regularization of teachers even before the three-year period was complete. It's a scam worth crores of rupees and now they are all trying to cover it up by fudging records and misplacing files. Regardless, the RTI documents in my possession will contradict anything and everything they now try to cover up," said Gupta.
An education department official says there is "partial truth" in Gupta's allegations. "The part that entire hiring process is illegal is not true because even though there has been a freeze since 2012, certain subject teachers (English, Math and Science) were later allowed to be hired. Also for minority schools, the freeze was not completely applicable," the official said. The same official, who did not want to identified, accepted that there has been a separate proven instance of improper hiring. "The education commissioner had identified around 100-odd teacher appointments that were invalid and the local education officer in turn cancelled all of them. But these teachers then questioned how come the same officer who first approved the appointment is now cancelling it? So now an inquiry is being done at the deputy director of education (DDE) office about it," the source said.
Representative image
