Hey teachers, what's this 'home' work, asks EC

MUMBAI: In a major rap on the knuckles of teachers, the election commission has initiated action against over 100 teachers for giving false addresses.

The action comes a few days ahead of an election to send teachers’ representative to the Maharashtra legislative council. Nearly 20,000 secondary school and 70,000 graduates will vote to elect an MLC each from the graduate and teacher constituencies.

The action, first of its kind, was necessitated when the EC noticed large scale anomalies in information submitted by the teachers. They all are alleged to have provided false addresses in a voter registration drive.

“We received a complaint from a teachers’ organisation and acting on that we checked addresses given by 103 teachers, and found that they were not living there,” chief election officer U Madan told newspersons in Mumbai on Friday.

“We have deleted their names from the list. We will also be filing criminal cases against the offenders,” Mr Madan said.

Admitting that this was the first time that the commission was taking action against such a large number of people, Mr Madan said, “This has never happened on such a large scale before. We will obviously have to be more careful while registering voters from now on and keep a more stringent check.”

Elections for council seats, representing teachers and graduates, will be held on June 24. Nearly 20,000 secondary school and 70,000 graduates will vote to elect an MLC each from the graduate and teacher constituencies.