The Hindu : New Delhi News : Teachers' transfer policy on the right path, says Lovely

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 18, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Teachers' transfer policy on the right path, says Lovely

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, DEC. 17. Ridiculing the Leader of the Opposition, Jagdish Mukhi, for making baseless allegations and trying to play to the galleries, the Education Minister, Arvinder Singh Lovely, today informed the Delhi Assembly that the new transfer and posting policy had brought about a semblance of order in the teacher-student ratio. It was a rational exercise aimed at dealing with the shortage of teachers and providing the best teaching aids to the students in more than 1200-odd government schools across the Capital.

Raising the matter under Rule 280 in the Assembly, Mr. Mukhi claimed the new transfer posting policy had created total chaos with the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. He charged the Director (Education) with being dictatorial and not listening to the views of the MLAs. Mr. Mukhi claimed that he had a list of 400 cases of teachers who had been transferred and posted despite being in the last year of their retirement. Under the rules, the Department avoids transferring teachers during their last year of service as a goodwill gesture. "It is strange the Director does not listen to the Minister and the Chief Minister does not listen to the Minister," he remarked.

Responding to the charges levelled by Mr. Mukhi, the Education Minister asserted that no chaos or confusion had been created by the new policy. In fact, the posting of teachers had been rationalised under the system and it was wrong on part of Mr.Mukhi to make such baseless allegations. Mr. Lovely stated the first priority of the Government was to keep in mind the interest of the students first. As a major step in this direction, the shortage of teachers in various schools had been reduced to a large extend. A new norm of one teacher for 45 students had been enforced and this was being followed in all the 70 Assembly constituencies in the Capital. He said under the old regime, there was no account of how many posts were vacant and what was the exact shortage of teachers in the city. During the last six months, the entire system had been rationalised and all the data had been collected and downloaded in computers for proper verification.

The Education Minister said that during the exercise for rationalisation, it was found that that some of the regions in the Capital had severe shortage of teachers while others were found having extra teachers. This anomaly has been set right and if still there was a shortage of teachers, then the MLAs could just approach him and he would look into the matter.

Regarding the grievances of the teachers in connection with the posting and transfer during their last year in service, Mr. Lovely asked Mr. Mukhi to supply him the list of 400 affected teachers and he would have their cases examined. Conceding that there might have been some cases where such a situation could have arisen, Mr. Lovely said that for the first time a Grievances Cell had been created under the Secretary (Education) to look into all such cases. Incidentally, the cell had also representation from the teachers union's in order to ensure justice to all. "There might be vacancies in some areas even after this exercise, but all this would be taken care of within the next few months. The opposition should refrain from making such allegations which do not have any substance," he added.

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