With the Karnataka Education (Amendment) Bill, 2017 being stuck, pre-university college principals and lecturers have this time also decided to boycott evaluation of second pre-university answer scripts.
After a protest organised by pre-university college principals and lecturers here on Saturday, Thimmaiah Purle, president of the Karnataka State Pre-university College Lecturers’ Association, said, “We are asking the State government to set right our pay disparity, increase our basic salary from ₹22,800 to ₹26,000 and implement the Kumar Naik committee report.”
He added that the meeting with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday did not help resolve the issues. The PU lecturers were also demanding that they be promoted to degree colleges, he added. There are around 31,000 principals and lecturers in government and aided PU colleges.
In 2016, the evaluation of answer scripts was delayed for two weeks following a boycott by lecturers. After this, the State government gave them one round of increment, which the lecturers said was not sufficient.
To put an end to this, the Department of Primary and Secondary Education introduced the Karnataka Education (Amendment) Bill, 2017 that, among other things, has a provision for imprisonment extending up to five years or a fine of up to ₹5 lakh or both for those who instigate people trusted with evaluation or examination duty to stay away from it. It is also aimed at penalising lecturers who do not evaluate as per the scheme of evaluation.
