Guest teachers reply to show-cause notices

SIRSA: Facing the axe, guest teachers have decided to intensify their strike. Vinod Kasnia, district president of the Guest Teachers Association, today accused senior functionaries of the Education Department of having misled the Punjab and Haryana High Court by declaring them surplus, Kasnia said all 4060-odd guest teachers had submitted identical five-page replies to the show-cause notice served on them whereby they had challenged the government’s records and also cited an HC judgment to support their claims.

Guest teachers protest in Sirsa on Sunday. Photo: Sanjeev Sharma

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Sirsa, May 24

Facing the axe, guest teachers have decided to intensify their strike.

Vinod Kasnia, district president of the Guest Teachers Association, today accused senior functionaries of the Education Department of having misled the Punjab and Haryana High Court by declaring them surplus, Kasnia said all 4060-odd guest teachers had submitted identical five-page replies to the show-cause notice served on them whereby they had challenged the government’s records and also cited an HC judgment to support their claims.

“Senior officers of the department have given false affidavits in the court although reports sent by Block Education Officers clearly atated that guest teachers had enough workload to keep their jobs,” he said.

He alleged that a single guest teacher was looking after two of three sections in certain schools but he or she too had been declared surplus.

Of the 4,060 guests teachers facing the axe, Kaithal has the maximum 380 teachers, followed by Sirsa (344), Ambala(281), Bhiwani (285), Faridabad (99), Fatehabad (295), Gurgaon (133), Hisar (224), Jhajjar (122), Jind (260), Karnal (236), Kurukshetra (237), Mewat (149), Narnaul (92), Palwal (142), Panchkula (77), Panipat (202), Rewari (93), Rohtak (32), Sonipat (113) and Yamunanagar (250).

The guest teachers had earlier announced that they would approach police stations to lodge FIRs against Principal Secretary TC Gupta, Elementary Education Director and Deputy Director for “misleading the court with false information”, “misuse of power”, “criminal conspiracy”, “fraud” and “preparing forged documents” for presenting before courts.

However, the plan was put off today and Kasnia said that the teachers would now lodge FIRs tomorrow.

Meanwhile, hundreds of guest teachers today held a demonstration here and marched to the residence of Jagdish Chopra, Political Adviser to Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar. However, they were stopped 100 meters ahead of Chopra’s residence. The guest teachers sat in dharna there for over two hours.