Explained: Fiasco Around Teachers' Digital Attendance In Uttar Pradesh And The Power Of Unions

After massive protests by the government primary teachers in Uttar Pradesh (UP) against digital attendance, the Yogi Adityanath-led government decided to put the decision on hold until further orders.

Principal Secretary of the Basic Education Department (BED) of UP, M K Shanmuga Sundaram announced on Tuesday (16 July) that a committee will be formed and further decisions will be taken based on its report.

What Was The Controversy?

The controversy began on 8 July, when the digital attendance system was implemented a week ahead of the earlier plan of implementation on 15 July.

Thousands of government primary teachers hit the streets to protest against the order. They also boycotted the system with only 2 per cent of teachers marking attendance digitally on the first day.

The protests continued for over a week as the teachers were not ready to sign digital attendance, even from the original date of implementation on 15 July.

They argued that before the implementation, infrastructure, both physical and digital, should be improved so that teachers don't face difficulties in filing attendance on time.

Some teachers demanded that first the issues of their leave provisions should be sorted out, then they will abide by the digital attendance system, while others argued that other government departments should have this system first.

What Happened Then?

To end the deadlock with the teachers, the government made various tweaks in the digital attendance system. First, it gave a leniency of 30 minutes to the teachers by allowing them to mark their attendance by 8:30 am.

When the deadlock persisted, Chief Minister Adityanath intervened. After this, the BED decided on 12 July to allow teachers to mark their digital attendance at any time throughout the entire school period.

"Until the process for recording teacher attendance is fully established, the digitise register app is available anytime during the school day," Kanchan Verma, director general of UP school education, said.

The next day, the district-level officers even visited the schools to encourage teachers and help them in marking digital attendance but the protests continued.

In this meeting, it was decided that a committee would be formed to delve into the modalities of digitalisation and submit its report in two months.

What Will Happen Now?

The expert committee will comprise of education department officials, representatives of teachers’ unions, and academicians. It will take the inputs from the teachers and will try to understand their issues.

It will also give suggestions for improving the efficacy and ease of the system. After reviewing the committee's report, the BED will decide how to proceed with the digital attendance system.

Why Did The Government Bow Down?

UP has over 6 lakh primary teachers and 'shiksha mitras' (para-teachers), while the combined number of other state government employees is 13 lakh, making them the largest chunk of government employees.

The UP government could not afford to displease them, not only for the children's education but also for Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) electoral prospects, especially when the teachers got the support of the opposition parties like Samajwadi Party (SP).

Even BJP's own leaders like Bareilly MP Chhatrapal Singh Gangwar and MLCs Devendra Pratap Singh, Awadhesh Kumar Singh aka Manju Singh, Babulal Tiwari and Ashutosh Sinha urged Chief Minister Adityanath to reconsider the decision.

The BJP has already faced a setback in the Lok Sabha elections due to the paper leak issue. It did not want the digital attendance to become an issue in the upcoming assembly bypolls for 10 seats.

The Precedents

Digital attendance is a norm in most of the private jobs. Even in the state's higher education department, the system is in place since 2022. The system faced protests at that time too, but then Education Minister Dinesh Sharma was able to enforce it.

While the neighbouring state Bihar implemented digital attendance for teachers recently, the system is in place in other states like Goa, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and many northeast states.

The government wants to implement a digital system for maintaining teachers' records easily and to also ensure the timely presence of the teachers in schools, which is often an issue.