State School Education and Literacy Minister Jagarnath Mahato on Wednesday met representatives of the 65,000 odd para teachers in Jharkhand and assured to come up with proper rules for regularisation of their services. The Minister also said that the Government will consider withdrawing the cases leveled against protesting para teachers during the former Raghubar Das-led Government.

“We will certainly come up with rules and regulations for regularisation of services for para teachers. The current rules will also be scrutinised,” said Mahato.

The para teachers, ad hoc teachers appointed under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme of the Centre back in 2002, impart education to students in rural and semi-urban areas of the tribal state. Some of the schools, hardly a few kilometer from the State capital’s periphery are run by para teachers alone.

Last year, the teachers had to suffer due to delay in disbursement of their honorariums. The Government had then said that the SSA was not disbursing enough funds to pay honorariums to all the para teachers in Jharkhand. The teachers have also been up in arms against the Government demanding regularisation of services. Almost every year, the teachers have staged protests and gone of strikes, crippling the primary education system in rural Jharkhand in the past decade or so.

The latest in the series of protests by these ad hoc teachers was a strike from November 16, 2018 to January 17, 2019. Para teachers Suryadev Thakur and Ujjwal Rai reportedly died after being lathi-charged at a Chief Minister’s event on November 15, Jharkhand’s Statehood Day. Another para teacher, Kanchan Das, allegedly died of cold while protesting outside former minister Louis Marandi’s residence in Dumka in course of the strike. 

Sanjay Dubey, a para teacher who met Mahato on Wednesday, said that around 10,000 para teachers are still serving as ad hoc teachers in the State despite clearing the Jharkhand Teachers Eligibility Test (JTET).

 He requested the Minister to ensure regularisation of services for the teachers who have cleared JTET. “We have handed over a list of our demands to the minister. We are hopeful of getting his support,” said Dubey.

Mahato also said that his Ministry will gradually address all the issues pending due to the alleged lackadaisical approach of the former Government. “There are many issues that need our attention. We will gradually address all of them,” he said.