Child care leave to women teachers in varsities on the table, says Bihar minister

PATNA: Bihar’s education minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary on Tuesday told the state Assembly that the government will soon take a favourable decision of granting child care leave for women teachers in universities across the state, as is applicable for women officials in the state government.

“We are studying the matter. A favourable decision will be taken soon and applied to all universities,” the minister said while replying to a short notice question raised by BJP member Janak Singh.

In 2015, the state government had made a provision to grant 730 days of child care leave for women employees. The maternity leave was also extended to 180 days in 2015 for women staff in the state government. Both maternity leave and child care leave could be availed by women employees for two children in their entire career.

Meanwhile, the state Assembly witnessed uproarious scenes when ruling and opposition members cornered the government over non-creation of management committees in high schools. The education minister tried to assure the members that corrective steps would be taken.

Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha gave a ruling that managing committees in all schools should be formed within a month.

The education minister refuted allegations levelled by the Opposition leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav that scholarship of Rs 50,000 for girls doing graduation under Mukhyamantri Kanya Utthan Yojana was not reaching beneficiaries.

Yadav also took potshots at the state government over the recent Niti Aayog report in which the state had been ranked low in the education sector.

“We are also pressing for changing the system of ranking of states... The developed states and under developed states cannot be ranked on the same parameters,” Chaudhary said.