As the elections roll up in India, an appeal from the academic community to their close district officer is a common phenomenon across India. The call for election duty to them is at the center of the election process, completely against their conventional nature of duty consisting of taking lectures and running research labs. Professors, who are known for their superior abilities and profound knowledge, are becoming more involved in elections by acting as poll workers and presiding officers. A sudden shift in the nature of their work from meeting the academic deadline to carrying out a compelling election process raises intriguing questions about the intersection of academia and governance. It’s resulted in the protest because election duty is not a choice but is obligatory for them.
How are they drafted?
Under Article 324 of the Constitution of India, the election body is responsible for supervising and conducting elections in a free and fair manner. In addition, Article 324(6) provides that the President or the Governor of a State shall, when so requested by the Election Commission (EC), make available such staff as may be needed to discharge the function of the election process. Under this article, the President and the Governor are obligated to make those employees available.
The EC itself has few own permeant employees dedicated all year to the election process. Whereas, at a larger level, the EC hires employees from other fields to fill various administrative positions during elections. For example, under Sections 21 and 22 of the R.P. Act, 1951, the District Magistrate/Deputy Commissioner/Collector becomes the Returning Officer of a Parliamentary Constituency, responsible for a range of duties including publishing notices regarding the election, preparing the EVMs and VVPATs for the elections, counting the votes, and declaring the results. Similarly, under Section 26 of the R.P. Act 1951, presiding officers and polling officers—mostly comprised of professors, higher secondary teachers, primary teachers, and others—are drawn from various government bodies to conduct elections on election day.
Especially the drafting teachers and college and university’s teachers are countered by protests nationwide. Widespread discontent for drafting in unnecessary non-academic activities, covered by a number of prominent newspapers recently, with the headings “Teachers Protest Election Duties”, “Teachers protest overburdening election duties amidst…”, “Warrant against teacher in Ahmedabad after she fails to…”, “MLC says no to election duty for teachers in Maharashtra”, “Poll duty triggers scare among Bengal teachers who say…”, inthe Hindu, TOI, Indian Express, Hindustan Times.
Argument for Exemption:
In 2019, Justice Debangshu Basak of the Calcutta High Court observed that the EC should ensure college and university teachers are assigned polling duties in accordance with their respective designations. The petitioner, Ajajul Ali Khan, from Kazi Nazrul Islam University, along with a lecturer from Sidhu Janu Birso University, were appointed as polling officers under a Group “D” employee of the university. This recurring incident happens each election; in the last Panchayat Raj Election in West Bengal too, the college teachers across the state were dispensed with election duties. Numerous assistant professors and associate professors, even the principals of some colleges, have been appointed as presiding officers.
Similar to the above observation, there are court verdicts and the ECI’s own directives, like the verdicts of Hon’ble Punjab and Haryana High Court (W.P. No. 6845 of 2004), directives issued by the Election Commission of India (Letter No. 576/3/2004/JS-II Dated 09.08.2004) to the Chief Electoral Officers of all the States, and furthermore, directives issued on June 7, 2023, letter No. 464/INST/EPS/2023 of the ECI, all of these commonly support the exemption of experienced professionals, such as university and college staff shouldn’t be assigned polling duties at voting stations unless there’s a clear reason, which must be written down by the District Election Officer if such appointments are necessary. The basis for providing exemption in these orders is derived from the principle of hierarchy, generally followed by the bureaucrat to maintain dignity in their working environment. It emphasizes that the appointee should not be deployed under the person who holds rank subsequent to him or her.
College teachers also claim that there are other significant issues that extend beyond disregarding orders. The District Election Officer (DEO) doesn’t simply bypass the order but also arbitrarily decides the appointment of the presiding officer. The head of the educational institute is not consulted while drafting his or her personnel. Moreover, their basic rights are not taken into consideration. Such arbitrary deployment leads to tragic outcomes. For instance, over 700 staff on poll duty in UP lost the battle to COVID-19’ just due to arbitrary deployment to election duty.
In 2016, the National University of Education Planning and Administration (NUEPA), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, reported that only 19.1 percent of a teacher’s annual school hours are spent on teaching activities. On the basis of that, in 2017, the central government formed a committee to ensure that teachers are not assigned any non-academic work at the cost of their core responsibilities. In this report, Commenting on the shocking facts revealed in the report, Chaitanya MRSK, a Right to Education activist (RTE), said
“We need to look at the teachers as assets in nation-building, invest in teacher training and improving the quality of teaching, and not involve them in administrative work. I personally know of a lot of teachers who prefer working in private schools and not as Vidya volunteers because in the private sector, teachers are not involved in administrative work. Their sole focus is to improve their delivery and focus on the child’s growth.”
Universities and colleges are considered a microcosm of our nation’s intellectual ecosystem. The deliberate imposition of unnecessary non-academic activities destabilizes and undermines the fundamental mission of education. The college and university’s teachers spend the year strictly adhering to their academic calendar, which includes completing the syllabus, setting papers, conducting examinations, evaluating answer scripts, etc. A slight delay in it put the entire system into the vicious circle of delaying the entire academic journey. It not only degrades the quality of education but also impacts institutional reputations pertaining to accreditation standards in the NAAC. Unlike the bureaucratic system, colleges and universities function under a stringent quality assessment and accreditation framework. Once the institution initiates competition for accreditation, it has to work day and night out to complete within the prescribe deadline, and any deviation from the targeted timeline can potentially thrash the institutional reputation for years to come.
Therefore, drafting teachers without getting consent from the head of the institution is a bureaucratic hegemony and also undermines the intricacies of academic commitments for national building. The exemption of election duty must be viewed with broader ramifications. Unnecessary drafting affects the entire educational ecosystem, leading to disruptions in students learning, undermining teachers’ professional dignity by deploying them to unfamiliar administrative tasks, and causing a misuse of administrative power by the DEO.
Arguments for drafting them:
The only reason for drafting college and university teachers for election duty is the dearth of employees with the EC. Election authorities say that there are 10 million election officials involved in the 2019 general election. In the 2016 general election, the staff deployed in polling booths alone numbered 37,31,897, excluding security and other personnel. The report also says that merely 400 officials, along with their state-level representatives, have a few more permanent employees in their offices.
Whereas, a whopping number of polling personnel are temporarily recruited. The shortage of employees and meeting the deadline for completing the electoral process in a free and fair manner compelled the election agency to draw and deploy various staff from government offices by just providing a few hours of rush training. Out of these employees, teachers and professors constitute a substantial portion of temporary polling personnel. In Ludhiana, with around 35% of the teaching and administrative staff of government schools deployed for poll duties reported in the Times of India on April 1, 2024, it appears to be unjustifiable when compared with the portion of employees inducted from other professions. In another instance, in 2015, teachers were deputed for polling duties as presiding officers without notification of any acute shortage of polling personnel for Asansol Municipal Corporation.
Teachers claim that a shortage of employees doesn’t mean that a large section of it should be filled by the academic community. A shortage of employees is a grey box; bureaucrats keep this box to ease out their own tasks. The data on the shortage of employees needs to be in black and white. Normally, these data are hardly clarified by the DEO. Teachers also say that there are no guidelines as far as proportionate withdrawals from different government offices. It is perceived that as long as these data remain encrypted, arbitrary withdrawals from the teaching sector will continue.
Way-out:
The electoral policy of India still follows the thumb rule in the election process. especially the DEO, who holds the charge of strategizing and planning elections in their district, relies on conventional methods to carry forward the electoral tasks. However, the problem of employee shortages can be addressed by embracing modern technology, collaborating with civil society, providing long-term training, and employing advanced strategic planning. As long as the EC handles the problem of employees’ shortages by looking at permanent personnel, it will continue to linger. Developed countries like the UK, USA, and Canada have successfully tackled staff shortages through recruitment drives, extending partnerships with civic organizations, introducing comprehensive training programs, procuring flexible work arrangements, providing incentives and compensation, and spreading public awareness campaigns.
A shortage of employees is the biggest problem the ECI is dealing with. No electoral agency around the world has a permanent employee. A multifaceted effort is the prerequisite demand for the ECI to dealing with the problem. An arbitrary use of administrative law might be the quick solution to it, but certainly not! not a longitudinal one. It is indispensable for the ECI and other statutory authorities primarily to see the problem not only from the perspective of principles of hierarchy but also as an institutional challenge.
Dr. Md Anis Akhtar has expertise in the field of electoral policy in India. Currently, serves as an Assistant Professor in the department of Political Science at a college affiliated with Vidyasagar University, W.B.
