Karnataka SIR: Teaching on the sidelines

“At first, when we were told we only had to attend for two hours 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’ house in Kolar to help with the ragi (finger millet) harvest. It’s been over a month since I last saw my class teacher in M. Devara’s class in March.” a class 8 student at Government Model Kannada Primary and High School in Pulikeshinagar.

With only one teacher at this school, the 5th to 8th graders spend months of 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 assumed there would be no mid-term exams in November. “Even before the summer holidays, we’ve been attending classes like this for months, with four or five classes sitting together. None of us can do anything, nothing in maths or science,” he says.

For students like Devaraju and Ajay, what started as a welcome break from classes meant months away from learning. Like them, children in government and aided schools across Karnataka spent months without seeing their teachers, many of whom were assigned as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) for the Election Commission of India’s (SIR) special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

SIR began in Karnataka on June 30, with the enumeration phase extended twice. The publication of the final voter lists, originally scheduled for October 7, was postponed to October 27. However, the involvement of teachers in the exercise started even earlier, in May, when they were assigned preliminary mapping of voter lists in addition to their regular teaching duties.

Across Karnataka, 59,050 BLOs have been appointed for SIR, with the education department contributing the largest share, followed by anganwadi workers. Neither the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer nor district administrations have released a department-by-department breakdown of those appointments, making it difficult to know how many teachers were pulled from classrooms. However, the situation on the ground suggests that several schools are now led by one teacher, while others have only two teachers managing multiple classes. According to the Government Teachers Association, 70,000 people have been diverted as BLOs and BLO supervisors.

Anganwadi workers have also been recalled from their regular work to serve as BLOs, leaving their centers understaffed and young children without adequate care. | Photo credit: File photo

Teaching without teachers

In another school in RT Nagar, six out of eight teachers, including the principal, are assigned BLO duties. “I asked my teacher when he would be back. He said he didn’t know either. Our attendance has also gone down. There are 22 students in our class but more than seven don’t come to school on a given day,” said Preetham, a Class 8 student, lamenting that he hasn’t seen his “favourite sir” for months.

With their teachers gone, Preetham and his classmates were left to revise their lessons on their own. “Most of our friends don’t come and our principal isn’t there either. So the rest of us started carrying the football. We play, eat lunch and go home. The teachers told us to repeat what they taught us, but we don’t remember what they taught. We don’t know the syllabus for this year,” he said.

Series on non-teaching duties

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

Since last year, teachers have been repeatedly dragged into non-teaching duties, leaving them physically and mentally exhausted and with little time to do the work they were appointed to do.

In September 2025, government school teachers were deployed in Karnataka Government Social and Educational Survey (Caste Survey). In the remaining two months, they had to rush to complete the syllabus for the academic year 2025-26. Before they could make up for lost teaching time, more than one million government school teachers across Karnataka, from primary to secondary, were engaged in work for the National Census 2027 from April to May this year. This also coincided with the assessment of SSLC answer papers for many of the teachers, who piled one job on top of the other.

Some visiting teachers

The lack is not the same in schools. While some have deputed teachers to replace those assigned BLO duties, Urdu and Tamil medium schools have limited options as substitutes must know the language of instruction.

In Kengeri, for example, guest teachers were assigned to several government schools to make up for staff shortages. But there is no relief for the Urdu medium school in the area, which is now functioning with only one teacher. With the principal and all high school teachers entrusted with BLO duties, the primary school teacher is left to manage classes 1 to 8.

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

A frustrated maths teacher at a Telugu high school in Shivajinagar said, “Teaching in a government school is not easy. We have to constantly reassure parents that their children are learning, that the teachers are going to school. Some children don’t even know the alphabet or numbers and we have to teach them from scratch. After the COVID pandemic, we can’t give them time, but we can’t give them time and we can’t give them attention. The need.” Since last Dasara, she has been tied up by a number of non-teaching tasks.

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

The BLO in CV Raman Nagar Assembly constituency said she had to take her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter with her while performing her duties. “Even if we tell people that we will come back the next day, they come to the streets and ask how we can leave. Many refuse to cooperate unless we finish the work here and there. For the last four months, work has not stopped even for a single day. We want to go back to our schools, see our students and teach them. We are worried about how they will write the SSLC exams this time,” she said.

SIR is the latest in a series of government exercises that have kept teachers out of classrooms. According to the Government Teachers Association, 70,000 people have been diverted as BLOs and BLO supervisors. | Photo credit: File photo

Resorts without care

Anganwadi workers have also been recalled from their regular work to serve as BLOs, leaving their centers understaffed and young children without adequate care.

An anganwadi worker in Rajagopala Nagar said her center has 18 children between the ages of three and six, mostly children of labourers. She went door-to-door to identify children in this age group, including those as young as three, and convince their parents to send them to the center. Parents were happy 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. “There is only a helper. The children come, she gives them milk and they sleep there. Some play with each other, but there is no one to take proper care of them or teach them the alphabet and numbers, make them write and engage them in activities.”

Recipient Verification

In addition to their work at the anganwadi centers and their BLO duties, the workers were also tasked with verifying beneficiaries of the state government’s Gruha Lakshmi scheme, which provides ₹2,000 per month to a woman head of an eligible household. Work includes reviewing payee details, tracking late payments and collecting or uploading documents for verification. “All that work has stopped since then. Those people need us, but we couldn’t help them, and again there are complaints against us. They think we are deliberately avoiding them or discriminating against them,” said Lakshmi.

Even as this work piled up, anganwadi workers were also assigned polio-related duties that required them to go door-to-door. “Even then the BLO supervisor called me why we were making so little progress on certain days. How much work can one person do?” Lakshmi asked.

The violence has also left anganwadi helpers, who are expected to keep the centers running in the absence of workers, grappling with duties they are not used to.

Helpers said maintaining food registers, recording records, checking stock expiration dates and keeping records are tasks handled by workers. “What happens if someone comes and asks us about these records?” one aide asked, arguing that the government should not introduce schemes and these activities at the cost of anything related to children.

Since last year, teachers have been repeatedly dragged into non-teaching duties, leaving them physically and mentally exhausted and with little time to do the work they were appointed to do. | Photo credit: File photo

Equal pay, unequal work

From the enumeration stage to delivering notices, adding to lists and assisting voters, BLOs only receive an annual remuneration of ₹12,000 per year, which the Election Commission of India has doubled this year alone. However, the amount remains the same regardless of how many people the BLO is responsible for, although the workload varies significantly from area to area. “Each area has a different population. A BLO serving 1,200 people will get the same remuneration as one serving 400. If the payment cannot be calculated per person, there should at least be an additional incentive above a certain number,” argued the BLO.

The teachers’ unions have repeatedly written to the Ministry of Education for exemption from non-pedagogical duties, but their demands have remained unheeded. The Government Association of Primary School Teachers also wrote to the union and the Chief Electoral Officer shortly before the draft electoral rolls were published, asking that teachers not be allocated after the draft lists stage. Anganwadi workers too staged protests a few days before the start of the SIR, demanding that they be relieved of BLO duties.

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

Proposed protection

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 work. The draft law was circulated among the departments for their approval.

Under the proposed framework, district administrations would first have to prepare a register of non-teaching staff that would be accessible across ministries, statutory bodies, corporations and public sector undertakings. Retired civil servants and trained volunteers would also be included. These workers would have to be fully utilized before teachers could be considered for such assignments.

A teacher can be deployed only after the Deputy Commissioner concerned confirms that no additional staff is available. The application and certificate would have to be sent through the district education office to the director of block education or the deputy director.

However, officials from the Ministry of Education said that unless vacancies across ministries, including the Ministry of Education, are not filled, teachers may continue to be assigned non-teaching duties as they make up the largest number of government employees.