Veteran BJP leader Babual Gaur today embarrassed the Madhya Pradesh government in the Legislative Assembly, saying education is in a shambles in the BJP-ruled state. Gaur, a former chief minister, blamed deployment of teachers for non-educational tasks for the "poor" condition of education. Citing a survey, Gaur said Madhya Pradesh was lagging behind other states in the country as far as mathematical and language-related skills of the students are concerned. Raising the issue during Question Hour, Gaur sought to know the exact number of teachers currently working as Booth Level Officers (BLO) in the state, with members of the opposition Congress watching gleefully. In his reply, Minister of State for General Administration Lal Singh Arya said a total of 41,340 teachers are working as BLOs across 65,000 polling stations. He said a total of 86 teachers are being temporarily engaged by district election offices. Arya said teachers are deployed for election duty only when the government cannot draw enough staffers from other departments for the purpose. "The teachers are asked to do electoral work in morning and evening hours and on off-days only so teaching doesn't not affected," said the minister. To this, Gaur said teachers are being asked to do poll-related work at a time when 45,000 vacancies are lying vacant in the state.
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