West Bengal withdraws order on teachers doing census work after school hours, weekends

Kolkata: The West Bengal government on Wednesday informed the Calcutta High Court that it has withdrawn a notification mandating teachers to engage in census work after school hours and on weekends. This came a day after the high court flagged a lack of coordination between the state and the Centre over the work schedule for teachers assigned census duty and asserted that a balance must be struck between the enumeration work and school duties.

Hearing petitions over assigning census duty to school teachers, it noted that while the Census authority has fixed 9 am to 4 pm for census work, the state government says teachers will carry out the tasks after school hours and on weekends. On Wednesday, the state's lawyer informed the court that the state government has withdrawn the notification asking teachers to carry out the census work after school hours and on weekends.

He submitted to the court that Section 15A of the Census Act ensures that population count work would not negatively impact an employee's regular career, job status, or promotion opportunities. The counsel also said that each enumerator has to visit 150 houses in a month, which is five premises a day. This is not a humongous work schedule, he said.

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However, senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, representing one of the petitioners, submitted that teachers should be given either school work or census duty, but not both. The lawyer representing the census authority stated before the court that it does not fix the duty roster for employees allotted census work.

Charge officers in municipal areas concerned and divisional commissioners in districts fix the duty rosters depending on the service conditions, he said. Noting that the administration has withdrawn the August 3 notification over the census work schedule of the school teachers, Justice Krishna Rao reserved his judgment in the petitions over the allotment of the enumeration work.