– Mita Mukherjee 

Schoolteachers appointed through the State School Service Commission (SSC) in Bengal will be barred from participating in active politics or contesting elections, chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said after a state cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

“We have taken a very important decision. This is a historic decision. Henceforth, those appointed as schoolteachers will not be allowed to actively participate in politics. They will also not be allowed to contest elections to panchayats, municipalities, state assemblies or Parliament,” Adhikari said at a press conference following the cabinet meeting.

He said schoolteachers in some other states, including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, were also barred from participating in active politics. However, existing teachers who were already active in politics would retain their rights.

“We will not curb the rights already enjoyed by existing in-service teachers. We have included this provision in the recruitment rules of the School Service Commission. The new provision will apply to teachers recruited henceforth,” Adhikari said.

He said teaching was a noble profession and the government’s decision aimed to “restore the honour” associated with it.

According to the chief minister, the CPI(M) had permitted teachers to participate actively in politics in Bengal. “This is a wrong policy. This is not allowed in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. This system does not exist in any of our neighbouring states. This is practised only in Bengal. The politicisation of teachers cannot be allowed. Those recruited during our tenure will not participate in direct politics,” he said.

The BJP government’s move to bar schoolteachers from entering active politics drew criticism from political parties, including the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

The Left had traditionally fielded schoolteachers in elections in Bengal, particularly in panchayat polls. Since the late 1970s, Left parties had nominated teachers, especially those employed in state-aided primary schools, as candidates in panchayat elections, a government source said. Teachers were often chosen because of their perceived clean image.

Critics have described the proposed restriction as an infringement of teachers’ democratic rights.

Soumen Pal, general secretary of the Barrackpore Education Circle of the Advanced Society of Headmasters, said schoolteachers had long demanded that teachers in government-aided and government-run schools be accorded the status of government employees. Instead of addressing this demand, he said, the government was seeking to curtail their democratic rights.

“Teachers have been demanding the same status as government employees for a long time. This would ensure that schoolteachers enjoy the same financial and other benefits as government employees. The financial benefits of government employees are much higher than those of schoolteachers at present. Government employees, too, are not allowed to participate in active politics. We are surprised by the way the government has continued to deprive us of better salaries while taking a decision that will only curb our democratic rights,” Pal told EducationWorld.

The BJP government has at least two former or serving schoolteachers in its cabinet, including Dipak Barman, the school education minister, and Shankar Ghosh, the tourism minister.

“The BJP government itself has ministers who are teachers. Why did it include teachers in its cabinet? The BJP, too, has exploited their clean image,” a source said.

Barman said that, like him, many teachers had entered politics by taking advantage of relaxations introduced by previous governments in Bengal. However, he supported the BJP government’s decision to bar teachers from entering active politics, arguing that the practice had been accepted nationally.

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