‘700 govt school staff died on poll duty’
At least 700 state government school employees on panchayat poll duty succumbed to Covid in Uttar Pradesh this month, the state teachers’ union said on Friday, underlining the risk of flouting Covid norms during a devastating surge in infections.
In letters to CM Yogi Adityanath and the state election commission (SEC), the Uttar Pradeshiya Prathmik Shikshak Sangh has listed the names of all deceased and said they were infected during training and poll duty.
While the SEC did not comment on the association’s demand to defer counting, the state election commissioner Manoj Kumar on Friday asked district magistrates to ensure setting up of medical health desks at the counting centres with availability of medicines and deployment of doctors.
The four-phase panchayat polls for around 850,000 local body seats were held between April 15 and 29. The state governtricts.
LUCKNOW:
ment has denied the allegations and said it has no proof that the teachers died during poll duty.
The issue reached the Supreme Court on Friday when the top court issued notices to the state and SEC on a plea related to enforcement of Covid norms during counting of votes on Sunday. “What measures will the SEC take for counting?” the court asked, and said it will hear the matter on Saturday.
Earlier this week, the Allahabad high court also criticised the administration and SEC over violation of Covid protocol during the polls, and asked the poll body to answer why action shouldn’t be taken against election officials.
In the letters, the Uttar Pradeshiya Prathmik Shikshak Sangh demanded that the counting of votes on Sunday be deferred. Association president Dinesh Chandra Sharma said that in the last three weeks, he sent several letters to the chief minister and SEC to defer elections as several lives were lost.
The union chief said a maximum of 33 teachers died in Azamgarh district, 31 in Gorakhpur, 25 in Prayagraj and 20 each in Lucknow and Lakhimpur Kheri dis“Many of these lives could have been saved had the SEC taken note of our April 12 letter in which I pointed out that Covid norms were not being followed during training.”
The government denied the allegations. “There’s no specific audit done by basic education department about the number of teachers’ death… How do we know that teachers were not infected when they came for election duty? And how do we know that teachers did not get infected after returning from election duty ?” state minister (independent charge) for basic education, Satish Chandra Dwivedi said.
The Opposition criticized the government on the issue. Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav demanded compensation of ₹50 lakh each for those who lost their lives.
On April 22, primary and secondary government teachers jointly carried out an online campaign to air their grievances, alleging that many of their fellow teachers contracted Covid during training and poll duty.