Teachers Day Over, UP Teachers Left Disappointed: Dr Kuldeep Malik On Pension And Pay Parity Silence

Teachers across Uttar Pradesh are left with disappointment and deep dissatisfaction the day after Teachers Day, according to teacher leader Dr Kuldeep Malik, founder of the "Shiksha Par Charcha" programme, who says the state government showed indifference towards the teaching community on the one day of the year set aside for it.

Speaking in an interview to a senior journalist, Dr Malik said teachers across the state had carried considerable expectations into September 5, and that those expectations ended completely after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's address at the Teachers Day function in Gorakhpur.

Awards handed out, core demands untouched

Dr Malik pointed to what he called the two halves of the same day. On one side, the Chief Minister honoured 81 teachers of the state with the Rajya Adhyapak Puraskar and the Mukhyamantri Adhyapak Puraskar at a function in Gorakhpur. On the other, he said, there was no announcement at all on the larger demands teachers have been pressing for years: equal pay for equal work, or a dignified honorarium, for teachers working in unaided private-sector schools, and restoration of the old pension scheme for teachers in the government sector. Not addressing those, he said, disappointed teachers severely.

Published accounts of the Gorakhpur function support the award detail. The state-level ceremony was held at the Yogiraj Baba Gambhirnath auditorium and cultural centre near Ramgarhtal, where 76 teachers received the Rajya Adhyapak Puraskar-2025 and five teachers of self-financed secondary schools received the Mukhyamantri Adhyapak Puraskar-2025: 81 in all, 61 from the basic education department and 20 from secondary education, including 33 women. Each awardee received a citation, a memento and a sum of Rs 25,000. State awardees also become eligible for a two-year extension in retirement age and free travel of up to 4,000 kilometres a year on Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation buses.

What the two demands actually are

Both demands Dr Malik named are long-standing charter items rather than new asks. Teachers in unaided, or "vitt-viheen", secondary schools teach against recognised posts but are not paid from the state exchequer, which is why the demand is framed as equal pay for equal work and, failing that, a dignified honorarium. The old pension demand concerns teachers appointed after the shift to the contributory pension system. Both points have appeared for years in the district-level protest charters of secondary teachers' associations across Uttar Pradesh.

An election-year reading

Dr Malik framed the day in electoral terms. He said Teachers Day was observed in an election atmosphere because the present state government is close to completing its five-year term, with Assembly elections due in a few months, and that expectations built on that timing were dimmed rather than met. The 18th Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly was constituted in March 2022 and its term runs to 2027.

Taking a jibe at the Chief Minister, Dr Malik said that the Chief Minister of neighbouring Bihar, a state he described as the country's poorest, was making major announcements for teachers on Teachers Day, while "our Chief Minister" congratulated teachers and then delivered a lecture on law and order in the state. Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary did honour 38 teachers with the state teacher award at Shri Krishna Memorial Hall in Patna the same day and announced a set of education measures, among them a teacher training university, a separate pay scale for unaided-school teachers and AI training for teachers. Reports of the Gorakhpur address, for their part, record the Chief Minister speaking on Uttar Pradesh's ancient knowledge tradition and on combining it with modern and digital teaching methods.

A warning about two elections

Answering a question, Dr Malik advised and warned the government that if the demand for equal pay for equal work, or a dignified honorarium, for teachers working in the unaided private sector and the demand for old pension restoration for teachers in the government sector are not met at the earliest, the government could face heavy losses in the coming Legislative Council and Assembly elections.

The Legislative Council reference is not incidental. Elections to Uttar Pradesh's teacher and graduate constituencies of the Vidhan Parishad are on the horizon, and Dr Malik has publicly described himself as an MLC candidate from the Meerut-Saharanpur division teachers' constituency, besides campaigning on the demand that only a teacher should be allowed to contest a teachers' constituency seat. That context is relevant to how his warning should be read.

NewsDarpan has reported Dr Kuldeep Malik's statements as made in the interview cited by him. The government has not issued a response to these specific charges at the time of publication, and this report does not independently verify claims about the content of the Chief Minister's speech beyond what published accounts of the Gorakhpur function record.