Overview

• On October 4, Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains wrote to the Punjab Chief Secretary directing an immediate halt to deploying government school teachers for non-teaching or routine administrative work.
• He grounded the directive in Section 27 of the Right to Education Act, 2009, which restricts such use of teachers except for the decennial census, disaster relief, or election duties.
• The intervention followed reports that teachers in several districts were being assigned tasks such as monitoring stubble burning, pulling them away from classrooms.
• Bains said teachers' classroom presence is non-negotiable and described diverting them as a grave injustice that undermines students' right to education.
• He required prior written approval from the Department of School Education for any rare, unavoidable deployment, and no formal response from the Chief Secretary has been reported.