Junior College teachers suspend protest after Vinod Tawde agrees to some demands

The Maharashtra State Federation of Junior College Teachers Organisation (MSFJCTO) has temporarily suspended their non-cooperation protest after a "satisfactory" meeting with education minister Vinod Tawde and officials from the finance department. Around 60,000 teachers were not correcting the papers of HSC examinations.

Teachers from junior colleges had recently declared their non-cooperation protest against the state government for not fulfilling their several demands. The demands included sanctioning teachers' salary pending since 2007, making Information Technology (IT) subject aided and paying its teachers accordingly, separating administration of junior colleges from school and degree colleges, conducting science and maths exams of HSC students as per the old pattern and calling an external examiner for HSC board practical exams, among others.

Recently, the state agreed to meet the demand of providing an external examiner and also issued a circular to that effect. Another demand that was met was that of the 936 teachers, salary was disbursed to 334 who had worked from 2002-03 till 2010-11 academic year. The government also agreed to conduct the HSC science and maths examinations as per the old pattern.

MSFJCTO president Anil Deshmukh said, "We had a meeting with the education minister and finance department officials. The meeting was satisfactory and some of our demands were met. The IT subject proposal will be sent to the finance department. If any junior college teacher is transferred from the unaided junior college to an aided one, she/he will not be required to serve as shikshan sevak but can be absorbed as an approved teacher. The minister has claimed that soon the notifications will be issued on all these accepted demands. Hence, meanwhile, we will suspend the protest."