Karnataka SIR: Teaching on the back burner

“Initially, when we were told that we had to attend only two classes a day, we were all happy. We could play, eat lunch and go home. There was no homework either. But from mid-August to September, since there were no teachers, my parents sent me to my grandparents’ home in Kolar to help with the ragi (finger millet) harvest. It has been more than a month since I last went to school. I last saw my class teacher in March,” said M. Devaraju, a class 8 student at Government Model Kannada Primary and High School in Pulikeshinagar. 

With just a single teacher at this school, students from classes 5 to 8, for months, have been taking their classes together under a tree in the school playground. 

Pointing to the nearly 40 children gathered there, class 7 student Ajay says the students had assumed there would be no mid-term examinations in November. “Even before the summer vacation, for months we had been attending classes like this, with four to five classes sitting together. None of us knows anything, nothing in Mathematics or Science,” he says. 

For students like Devaraju and Ajay, what began as a welcome break from classes has meant months away from learning. Like them, children in government and aided schools across Karnataka have gone months without seeing their teachers, many of whom have been assigned as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) for the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls. 

The SIR began in Karnataka on June 30, with the enumeration phase extended twice. The publication of the final electoral rolls, initially scheduled for October 7, has been pushed back to October 27. But teachers’ involvement in the exercise began even earlier, in May, when they were assigned pre-mapping of electoral rolls alongside their regular teaching duties. 

Across Karnataka, 59,050 BLOs have been appointed for the SIR, with the Education Department contributing the largest share, followed by anganwadi workers. Neither the Chief Electoral Officer’s office nor the district administrations have disclosed a department-wise breakdown of these appointments, making it difficult to establish how many teachers have been pulled away from classrooms. However, situation from the ground suggest that several schools are now being run by a single teacher, while others have only two teachers to manage multiple classes. As per the Government Teachers Association, 70,000 people have been diverted as BLOs and BLO supervisors. 

Anganwadi workers, too, have been pulled away from their regular work to serve as BLOs, leaving their centres short of staff and young children without adequate care.   | Photo Credit: File photo

Teaching without teachers

At another school in R.T. Nagar, six of the eight teachers, including the headmaster, have been assigned BLO duties. “I asked my teacher when he would come back. He said even he didn’t know. Our attendance has also gone down. There are 22 students in our class, but more than seven do not come to school on any given day,” Preetham, a class 8 student, said, further lamenting that he had not seen his “favourite sir” for months. 

With their teachers are away, Preetham and his classmates have been left to revise lessons on their own. “Most of our friends do not come and our headmaster is also not there. So, the rest of us have started bringing a football. We play, eat the mid-day meal and go home. Teachers told us to revise what they had taught us, but we do not remember what was taught. We do not know the syllabus for this year,” he said. 

Series on non-teaching duties

The SIR is only the latest in a series of government exercises that have kept teachers away from classrooms.

Since the past year, teachers have been repeatedly pulled into duties unrelated to teaching, leaving them physically and mentally exhausted and with little time to do the job they were appointed for.  

In September 2025, government school teachers were deployed for the Karnataka government’s Social and Educational Surve (caste survey). They then, in the remaining two months, had to rush to complete the syllabus for the 2025-26 academic year. Before they could recover lost teaching time, more than one lakh government school teachers across Karnataka, from primary to high schools, were roped in for the National Census 2027 enumeration work between April and May this year. This, for many teachers, also coincided with the evaluation of SSLC answer papers, piling one work on top of another. 

Some guest teachers

The shortage is not the same across schools. While some have alloted teachers on deputation, to make up for those assigned BLO duties, Urdu- and Tamil-medium schools have scarce options because replacements must know the language of instruction. 

For instance, in Kengeri, guest teachers have been assigned to several government schools to make up for staff shortage. But an Urdu-medium school in the area, which is now running with just one teacher, has no relief. With the headmaster and all secondary teachers assigned BLO duty, a primary school teacher is left to manage classes 1 to 8. 

“Children come to government schools mostly because their parents cannot afford the high fees in private schools. But the government keeps putting teachers on duties other than teaching. How unfair it is on these children,” said the lone teacher, who has no experience of teaching higher classes.  

A frustrated mathematics teacher at a Telugu-medium school in Shivajinagar said: “Teaching in a government school is not easy. We have to keep assuring parents that their children are learning, that teachers are coming to school. Some children do not even know the alphabet or numbers and we have to teach them from scratch. After the COVID pandemic, their learning has become even slower. We know what they need from us, but we cannot give them the time and attention they need.” She has been tied up with a string of non-teaching assignments since last Dasara.

Some BLOs say they have never faced such pressure in years of carrying out BLO or election duties. “I have been doing BLO work for 23 years, but I have never experienced this kind of risk and pressure. If the government assigns us this work, it must also take full responsibility for our safety,” a BLO said. 

A BLO in the C.V. Raman Nagar Assembly constituency said she had to take her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter with her while carrying out her duties. “Even when we tell people that we will return the next day, they come out on the streets and question how we can leave. Many refuse to cooperate unless we finish the work then and there. For the last four months, the work has not stopped for even a single day. We want to return to our schools, see our students and teach them. We are worried about how they will write their SSLC examinations this time,” she said. 

The SIR is the latest in a series of government exercises that have kept teachers away from classrooms. As per the Government Teachers Association, 70,000 people have been diverted as BLOs and BLO supervisors.  | Photo Credit: File photo

Centres without care

Anganwadi workers, too, have been pulled away from their regular work to serve as BLOs, leaving their centres short of staff and young children without adequate care.  

An anganwadi worker in Rajagopala Nagar said her centre had 18 children aged between three and six, most of them children of labourers. She had gone door to door to identify children in this age group, including those who were about to turn three, and persuade their parents to send them to the centre. The parents were happy to know that their children would be taken care of from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

“But what assurance can we give them now?” she asked. “Only the helper is there. The children come in, she gives them milk, and they sleep there. Some play among themselves, but there is no one to look after them properly or teach them alphabets and numbers, get them to write, and engage them in activities.” 

Verifying beneficiaries

Alongside their work at anganwadi centres and their BLO duties, workers have also been tasked with verifying beneficiaries of the State government’s Gruha Lakshmi scheme, which provides ₹2,000 a month to the woman head of an eligible household. The work involves checking beneficiaries’ details, following up on delayed payments, and collecting or uploading documents for verification. “All that work has come to a standstill in between. Those people need us, but we could not assist them, and again complaints go against us. They think we are deliberately avoiding them or discriminating against them,” Lakshmi said. 

Even as this work piled up, anganwadi workers were also assigned polio-related duties, requiring them to go door to door. “Even then, calls would come from the BLO supervisor asking why our progress had been low on certain days. How much work can one person do?” Lakshmi asked. 

The strain has also left the anganwadi helpers, who are expected to keep the centres running in the workers’ absence, struggling with responsibilities they are not accustomed to handling.  

Helpers said maintaining food-count registers, recording entries, checking expiry dates of supplies, and keeping records were tasks handled by the workers. “What will happen if someone comes and asks us about these records?” one helper questioned, arguing that the government should not introduce schemes and these activities at the cost of anything that involves children. 

Since the past year, teachers have been repeatedly pulled into duties unrelated to teaching, leaving them physically and mentally exhausted and with little time to do the job they were appointed for.   | Photo Credit: File photo

Same pay, unequal work

From enumeration phase, till delivering notices, making additions to the rolls, and assisting voters, BLOs are paid only an annual remuneration of ₹12,000 annually, which the Election Commission of India doubled only this year. But the amount remains the same regardless of how many people a BLO is responsible for, even as the workload differs sharply from one area to another. “Every area has a different population. A BLO handling 1,200 people gets the same remuneration as one handling 400. If the payment cannot be calculated per person, there should at least be an additional incentive beyond a certain number,” a BLO argued. 

Teachers’ associations have repeatedly written to the Education Department, seeking exemption from non-teaching duties, but their demands have gone unheeded. The Government Primary School Teachers’ Association also wrote to the department and the Chief Electoral Officer shortly before the publication of the draft electoral rolls, requesting teachers not be assigned after the draft rolls phase.  Anganwadi workers, too, had staged protests for days before the SIR began, demanding that they be relieved of BLO duties.  

However, on August 19, the Deputy Commissioner’s office issued another order extending BLO duties until the publication of the final electoral rolls.

Proposed safeguard

The repeated diversion of teachers from classrooms has recently prompted a proposed legislative change that would make teachers the last resort for non-teaching duties, including election work and census exercises. A draft of the legislation has been circulated among government departments for their concurrence. 

Under the proposed framework, district administrations would have to first prepare a register of non-teaching personnel available across government departments, statutory boards, corporations and public sector undertakings. Retired public servants and trained volunteers would also be included. These personnel would have to be fully utilised before teachers could be considered for such duties. 

A teacher could be deployed only after the jurisdictional Deputy Commissioner certifies that no other personnel are available. The requisition and the certificate would have to be routed through the district education office to the Block Education Officer or Deputy Director. 

However, officials from the Education Department said that unless vacancies across government departments, including the Education Department, are filled, teachers may continue to be assigned non-teaching duties because they are the largest pool of government employees.