Summary:
Varanasi: Claiming that over 700 primary, upper primary school government teachers and other employees succumbed to Covid-19 after training and panchayat poll duty across the state since April 12, Uttar Pradeshiya Prathmik Shikshak Sangh has demanded that the counting of votes slated for May 2 should be deferred for now.
The four-phase panchayat elections in the state were held between April 15 and April 29.
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Varanasi: Claiming that over 700 primary, upper primary school government teachers and other employees succumbed to Covid-19 after training and panchayat poll duty across the state since April 12, Uttar Pradeshiya Prathmik Shikshak Sangh has demanded that the counting of votes slated for May 2 should be deferred for now.
The four-phase panchayat elections in the state were held between April 15 and April 29.
In a letter to chief minister Yogi Adityanath and the state election commission (SEC) on April 29, teachers’ association president Dinesh Chandra Sharma mentioned the names of all teachers who died after they contracted the infection when called for training and election duty.
Minister of state (independent charge) for basic education, Satish Chandra Dwivedi was quick to react and said, “There’s no specific audit done by basic education department about the number of teachers’ death.
It is wrong to say all those who were engaged in election duty died due to Covid.
How do we know that teachers were not infected when they came for election duty? And how does anyone know that teachers, after returning from the election duty, got infected for some other reasons? It is also beyond any justification that teachers contracted infection during poll duty and succumbed to it.”
“Government teachers alone were not doing election duty.
There were people from other departments too.