The striking Bihar contractual teachers are to get respectable increase in their salary but their demand for pay parity with permanent teachers would not be met in the wake of Supreme Court’s order, said Deputy Chief Minister and senior State BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi.

Over 3.5 lakh contractual teachers are on strike since February 17 demanding pay parity with about 80, 000 permanent teachers in Bihar. Their eight-point charter of demands includes reverting to old pension schemes.

The strike has severely affected functioning of the schools as most of them are locked. The evaluation of answer sheets of Class 12 examinations held recently and the conduct of Class X board examinations have been severely affected.

“We’ll make a respectable increase in their (striking teachers) salary…Chief Minister Nitish Kumar already has announced this and it was the NDA government which had earlier increased their salary,” Mr. Modi announced in the State council on Tuesday while responding to a debate on the third supplementary Budget for 2019-20.

The striking teachers would not get salary parity with permanent teachers in the wake of the Supreme Court order in this matter, he said.

FIR filed against many teachers

Hundreds of striking teachers had been suspended in different districts such as Begusarai, Gopalgunj, Kaimur, Patna and others. Some of them have also been dismissed on the charge of “indiscipline” and FIR too has been lodged against several of them.

However, the striking teachers said, “until our demands are met, we’ll not return to our work…its better to starve to death while on strike than to resuming our duty”. The strike call has been given by the Bihar Rajya Shikshak Sangharsh Samanvay Samiti, a joint platform of 26 school teachers associations.

“Teachers have a democratic right to protest and the government cannot snatch our rights to protest,” said the members of striking teachers associations while, adding “we’ll also not participate in the upcoming National Population Register exercise said to begin in the State in the month of May”.

Several Opposition leaders have been raising the issue of striking teachers in the Assembly and council for several days while requesting the government to meet their demand in the “interest of education of students which has been hampered severally due to the strike”.

“According to a rough estimate, over 50,000 schools are locked for the last two-weeks and students are sitting at home…who will take responsibility for this, if not government,” asked the Opposition leaders.