Karnataka SIR: Teaching on the back burner

Children in government and aided schools across Karnataka have not seen several of their teachers for months, for most of them have been assigned as Booth Level Officers for the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Students tell Rishita Khanna that what initially seemed like fun with many free hours, is now making them anxious...

Updated - October 23, 2026 10:44 am IST

The SIR is the latest in a series of government exercises that have kept teachers away from classrooms. As per the Government Teachers Association, 70,000 people have been diverted as BLOs and BLO supervisors. | Photo Credit: File photo

“Initially, when we were told that we had to attend only two classes a day, we were all happy. We could play, eat lunch and go home. There was no homework either. But from mid-August to September, since there were no teachers, my parents sent me to my grandparents’ home in Kolar to help with the ragi (finger millet) harvest. It has been more than a month since I last went to school. I last saw my class teacher in March,” said M. Devaraju, a class 8 student at Government Model Kannada Primary and High School in Pulikeshinagar.

With just a single teacher at this school, students from classes 5 to 8, for months, have been taking their classes together under a tree in the school playground.

Pointing to the nearly 40 children gathered there, class 7 student Ajay says the students had assumed there would be no mid-term examinations in November. “Even before the summer vacation, for months we had been attending classes like this, with four to five classes sitting together. None of us knows anything, nothing in Mathematics or Science,” he says.

For students like Devaraju and Ajay, what began as a welcome break from classes has meant months away from learning. Like them, children in government and aided schools across Karnataka have gone months without seeing their teachers, many of whom have been assigned as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) for the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls.

The SIR began in Karnataka on June 30, with the enumeration phase extended twice. The publication of the final electoral rolls, initially scheduled for October 7, has been pushed back to October 27. But teachers’ involvement in the exercise began even earlier, in May, when they were assigned pre-mapping of electoral rolls alongside their regular teaching duties.

Across Karnataka, 59,050 BLOs have been appointed for the SIR, with the Education Department contributing the largest share, followed by anganwadi workers. Neither the Chief Electoral Officer’s office nor the district administrations have disclosed a department-wise breakdown of these appointments, making it difficult to establish how many teachers have been pulled away from classrooms. However, situation from the ground suggest that several schools are now being run by a single teacher, while others have only two teachers to manage multiple classes. As per the Government Teachers Association, 70,000 people have been diverted as BLOs and BLO supervisors.

Anganwadi workers, too, have been pulled away from their regular work to serve as BLOs, leaving their centres short of staff and young children without adequate care. | Photo Credit: File photo

Teaching without teachers

At another school in R.T. Nagar, six of the eight teachers, including the headmaster, have been assigned BLO duties. “I asked my teacher when he would come back. He said even he didn’t know. Our attendance has also gone down. There are 22 students in our class, but more than seven do not come to school on any given day,” Preetham, a class 8 student, said, further lamenting that he had not seen his “favourite sir” for months.

With their teachers are away, Preetham and his classmates have been left to revise lessons on their own. “Most of our friends do not come and our headmaster is also not there. So, the rest of us have started bringing a football. We play, eat the mid-day meal and go home. Teachers told us to revise what they had taught us, but we do not remember what was taught. We do not know the syllabus for this year,” he said.

Series on non-teaching duties

The SIR is only the latest in a series of government exercises that have kept teachers away from classrooms.

Since the past year, teachers have been repeatedly pulled into duties unrelated to teaching, leaving them physically and mentally exhausted and with little time to do the job they were appointed for.

In September 2025, government school teachers were deployed for the Karnataka government’s Social and Educational Surve (caste survey). They then, in the remaining two months, had to rush to complete the syllabus for the 2025-26 academic year. Before they could recover lost teaching time, more than one lakh government school teachers across Karnataka, from primary to high schools, were roped in for the National Census 2027 enumeration work between April and May this year. This, for many teachers, also coincided with the evaluation of SSLC answer papers, piling one work on top of another.