Cong members stage walkout over reserved teachers' posts

Jaipur, Oct 5 (UNI) Congress legislators staged a walkout today protesting against the BJP government's failure to appoint SC/ST candidates as teachers in the reserved posts under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

Congress members were disatisfied with the minister's reply to Congress legislator Babulal Nagar's query, who alleged that the state government has not filled the reserved SC/ST teachers' posts despite getting Rs 800 crore aid from the Centre for the purpose.

Due to education minister Ghanshyam Tiwari's absence from the Assembly home minister Gulab Chand Kataria, while replying to the query, said 890 reserved posts for SC/ST candidates under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan were currently vacant. Apart from these, there were no other vacant posts.

Mr Kataria said the posts remained unfilled as no eligible candidates were found but the recruitment process has been started again.

Congress legislator Pradyuman Singh said the home minister is giving wrong statements as many more posts were actually vacant.

The BJP legislators objected to Mr Singh's statement and both treasury and opposition members started trading charges at each other.

Congress members alleged that BJP is misusing the funds for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and are not filling up the vacant posts deliberately. Then Congress members staged a walkout from the House but came back after a while and raised the issue again.

In the meantime, Speaker Sumitra Singh called for the next uestion but Congress members kept on raising the issue of minister's wrong statements. There were noisy scenes but calm prevailed when rrigation minister started answering the next question.

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