1.7 lakh UP contract teachers may boycott polls

MEERUT: In a bid to highlight the apathy of the Uttar Pradesh government towards their cause, about 1,000 contract teachers or shiksha mitras as they are referred to, have decided to boycott the Lok Sabha elections. The group is also formulating a strategy to persuade all 1,72,000 of their peers in the state to give the polls a miss in support of their demands. The shiksha mitras have been pressing the state government to concede to their long-standing demands like pay parity with their Uttarakhand counterparts.

"Our salary is a meagre Rs 3,500 as compared to Rs 13,000 for shiksha mitras in Uttarakhand. We were even asked to do a Bachelors Teacher Training (BTT) programme after which the state government had promised to elevate our status to that of assistant teachers, but they have done nothing so far,"said Dharampal Sharma, district president of Adarsh Shiksha Mitra Welfare Association (ASMWA).

Complaining about non-payment of salaries to some of the teachers since November last year, Sharma said the government had also been using their services for Aadhar-related work from time to time without paying them. Recently, most of them were assigned election duties. "If the government does not consider us its employees, why are we being registered for election duty?" he said.