Bihar government cut absentees’ names from school rolls, violated teachers’ rights: PUCL

NEW DELHI: The People’s Union for Civil Liberties(PUCL), a human rights organisation, has accused the Bihar government of violating the rights of students and teachers by removing lakhs of students' names from schools and forcing teachers to work during heatwaves.

In a report titled Human Rights Violation of Students and Teachers in Bihar, the organisation accused the Bihar government of hastily removing students’ names from school registers to save costs on scholarship money. It also said that the education department caused several teacher deaths by forcing them to work during the heatwave in May 2024.

Moreover, the report accused the government of violating the teachers’ rights to organise and express their opinions by threatening to cut salaries for forming associations and speaking to media outlets.

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Students removed from schools

An investigation conducted by PUCL, based on reports last year of nearly 24 lakh childrens’ names being removed from school registers, found that the government was removing students who were absent for even a few days and thus increasing school dropouts.

According to various reports, in November 2023, the Bihar education department asked schools to send show-cause notices to students who were absent from schools for more than three days without information. The assumption was that there was double enrolment with the students actually studying in other private or coaching schools.

However, the organisation said the authorities took no effort to find out why children were not attending schools. Moreover, they were eager to cut names in order to save scholarship money.

“A letter sent to the district education officers, dated September 9, 2023, stated that ‘if 10 percent students are also enrolled here only for DBT benefits and are not studying, then the state would save approximately 300 crores directly. However, no action or survey has been conducted to identify double enrollment’,” said the report.

The organisation said that this bureaucratic strictness has caused students to drop out of school. According to the report, a student in Murarpur village of Nalanda district was removed from school register when he did not attend school as he was sick and later his father passed away.

“Due to this, he could not attend school for several days. In the meantime, his name was removed from the register. Later, when he went to school, he was informed that his name had been cut. Now, he no longer goes to school,” the report said.

Two Dalit children from the same village also stopped going to school as they were scolded and harassed for not wearing a uniform even though the administration had not provided uniforms on time owing to the department not sending uniform money through DBT, the report said.

“The family does not have enough money to provide their children with a school uniform. When contact was made with the local school, the headmaster stated that there is an order from above to pressure the children to come to school. In September, when the headmaster was asked whether the children have been provided with the amount for the school uniform this year, he replied that their registration on the Bihar government's app is currently not active. Therefore, this year, the children are not eligible for the school uniform amount. That is, despite the school uniform amount not being provided, the children were being pressured to wear one. To avoid this harassment, the children were not being sent,” said the report.

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“It is evident that the main reason for the children being absent or not enrolled in government schools is not their enrollment in other schools or coaching, but rather administrative strictness, poverty, and backwardness acting as barriers,” it said.

Forcing teachers to work during heatwave

The PUCL report also said that the Bihar education department forced teachers to attend school during the heatwave in May 2024 “under the pretext of teaching weaker children”. The report said that the department was violating the human rights of teaching by forcing them to work during the heatwave when nearly 350 students, teachers and other school staff were already reported to have been hospitalised because of the heat.

The report also listed the names of 10 teachers from several districts of Bihar who passed away due to loo and other heatwave related difficulties.

The report also said that the education department was violating the teachers’ right to organise and express opinions against such decisions. It cited a letter sent by the director of the education department, on November 28, in which teachers were warned of strict action if they join any teachers’ associations which was deemed as ‘serious misconduct’.

The report said that dozens of employees were threatened with action to suspend or stop their salary for “making unnecessary statements in the newspapers”. It also said that several teachers refuse to discuss this matter with PUCL members for the “fear of severe retaliation”.

PUCL also said that teachers were forced to work on traditional holidays such as Raksha Bandhan and Christmas, and that the department introduced less conventional holidays such as Janmashtmi. The report also said that in many schools Gandhi Jayanti was not a holiday and teachers were forced to work despite it being a recognised holiday in the state and central calendars.