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Journalism of Courage
Maharashtra contractual education staff threaten hunger strike for regularisation
In a letter to School Education and Sports Minister Dada Bhuse, the Samagra Shiksha Sangharsh Samiti has given the state government until March 7 to issue a government resolution (GR) regularising the remaining 3,378 staff members.
The Samagra Shiksha staff held a massive demonstration in Nagpur during the Winter Session of the Legislative Assembly (File photo).
In a major escalation of their decades-long struggle for job security, thousands of contractual employees under the Samagra Shiksha scheme in Maharashtra have warned of an indefinite hunger strike at Azad Maidan in Mumbai starting March 9.
In a letter to School Education and Sports Minister Dada Bhuse, the Samagra Shiksha Sangharsh Samiti has given the state government until March 7 to issue a government resolution (GR) regularising the remaining 3,378 staff members.
The letter follows a demonstration in Nagpur during the Winter Session of the Legislative Assembly, where employees from 13 different cadres, including resource persons, data operators, and engineers, demanded an end to the alleged injustice.
Samagra Shiksha is a centrally sponsored scheme in Maharashtra that integrates school education from pre-school to Class 12. It subsumes three former schemes: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) for elementary education; Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) for secondary education; Teacher Education (TE) focusing on strengthening State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) and District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs).
In October 2024, the state government regularised 3,000 employees who worked with children with disabilities. However, the remaining 3,378 employees were left out, said Yogita Balakshe, state president of the Samiti.
“We have been working for 25 years. We are the ones who implement the Right to Education (RTE) Act on the ground,” said Balakshe.
“If you can regularise 50 per cent of the staff, why this injustice toward the rest of us? Many of us are nearing retirement; if we retire now, we get zero benefits and are forced to work in professions like security guards to survive.”
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The regularisation issue
According to the GR from March 4, 2025, the regularisation issue stems from the financial manual established in 2004 by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, which said that permanent positions and instead preferred contractual or deputation hiring. For more than 20 years, Maharashtra has employed contractual workers by giving them a break day once every six months.
In October 2024, a study committee was formed to look into regularising all staff. On March 4, 2025, A new GR modified the committee and ordered a final report within three months.
Balakshe said, “Even though the report of the committee has now been submitted, no GR has been released yet. We will not leave Azad Maidan before a GR in our favour is released, because this is our third protest in a year.”
The letter to the minister added that the previous protests were suspended as government representatives assured that the issue would be resolved.
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