Child care leave to women teachers in varsities on the table, says Bihar education minister

Bihar’s education minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary on Tuesday told the state Assembly that the government will soon take a favourable decision of granting child care leave for women teachers in universities across the state, as is applicable for women officials in the state government

Bihar’s education minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary on Tuesday told the state Assembly that the government will soon take a favourable decision of granting child care leave for women teachers in universities across the state, as is applicable for women officials in the state government.

HT Image

“We are studying the matter. A favourable decision will be taken soon and applied to all universities,” the minister said while replying to a short notice question raised by BJP member Janak Singh.

In 2015, the state government had made a provision to grant 730 days of child care leave for women employees. The maternity leave was also extended to 180 days in 2015 for women staff in the state government. Both maternity leave and child care leave could be availed by women employees for two children in their entire career.

Meanwhile, the state Assembly witnessed uproarious scenes when ruling and opposition members cornered the government over non-creation of management committees in high schools, alleging that principals at the government educational institutions were not keen to form the committees.

Intervening in the matter, Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha gave a ruling that managing committees in all schools should be formed within a month.

Replying to another question, education minister Chaudhary refuted allegations levelled by the leader of the opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav that scholarship of ₹50,000 for girls doing graduation under Mukhyamantri Kanya Utthan Yojana was not reaching beneficiaries. The minister said the government had given scholarships to 16,802 eligible beneficiaries against total applications of 17,311 in 2018-19 and to 51900 beneficiaries in 2019-20.

“Yes, in 2020-21, there has been some delay in giving scholarships because of the disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But the government is committed to giving scholarships to all eligible beneficiaries and we are fast- tracking the process,” the minister said.

Yadav also took potshots at the state government over the recent Niti Aayog report in which the state had been ranked low in the education sector. He said the government was doing little to improve the educational standard in the state, which prompted the education minister to assert that the state had made big strides in the education sector and improved the standard qualitatively as compared to previous times.

“We are also pressing for changing the system of ranking of states under various parameters by the Niti Aayog. The developed states and under developed states cannot be ranked on the same parameters,” the minister said.