Files of bogus teachers who resigned from Ahmedabad schools go missing

Remember the ghost teachers who had resigned from various schools in Ahmedabad in 2004 in the wake of the scam at Holy Child School at Bapunagar? An RTI application has revealed that the files pertaining to 214 such teachers have gone missing from the district educations offices of Ahmedabad.

Activist Ajay Mishra says he came to know about this through an RTI application filed recently to know the status of the case. While 39 such teachers belonged to Holy Child School, the other 175 were from other schools.

Mishra says, "I filed two RTI applications _ the first application was filed six months back and was sent to both rural and city DEOs; the second was filed four months back and was sent to the commissioner of schools. I received a reply to my second application and it said that I should get all vital information with regards the teachers who had resigned in 2004."

The RTI activist alleges that he was told by the DEOs that they don't have the information and that the schools from where the resignations were received should be contacted. Mishra claims that the registers having the details of the teachers' salary, resignation letters, and appointment letters had gone missing from the offices of DEOs.

In 2004, Holy Child School in Bapunagar was shut down by the state education department after it was unearthed that 39 ghost teachers were drawing salaries from the school.

Following this incident, the state education department carried out inspection in various schools of Ahmedabad to trace ghost teachers. Consequently, 175 teachers from different schools came forward to resign. This was between 2004 and 2007.

Mishra alleges that the then rural DEO and in-charge of city schools, HN Chavda, had taken nearly Rs1.5 lakh per resignation letter (in case of the 36 teachers) to show to the education department that the teachers had come to him personally to submit the resignations, though the teachers in question were actually staying abroad.

 DEO-rural MI Joshi when contacted  said: "I am not aware of any such appeal or case coming to me. May be it is with DEO-city." But DEO-city RI Patel said, "Nothing like this has happened."

Commissioner of schools, CV Som, claimed that he had no idea as it was the case of 2004 and "now it is 2011".