Work for a month and expect your salary at the end of it. This is a routine everyone follows but the Bihar government.
The state government has been delaying the payment of salaries to high school and plus two teachers for the past 6 months.
However, after much uproar over the issue at the Bihar Assembly on August 2, the state government informed the Bihar Legislative Council that the outstanding salaries would be paid within the next 10 days.
The tentative deadline given by the government has passed and the teachers are yet to be paid.
It seems that Nitish Kumar’s move to ban liquor in Bihar from April 1, 2016 might’ve had ripple effects on the state’s revenues. The non-payment of salaries to teachers is a testament to it.
Source: NewsX
According to several media reports, in 2006, it was Nitish Kumar’s policy to open licensed liquor shops in every panchayat and villages. Post this, the state revenue rose ten folds from Rs. 350 crore in 2004-2005 to over Rs. 4,000 crore 2005-2006.
Source: Indian Express
In order to increase revenue, the state assembly on August passed six legislations including the Bihar Value Added Tax (VAT) (Amendment) Bill, 2016 which seeks to propose an increase of .50 per cent to one per cent to the existing VAT rate. The Bill proposed to mop up an additional Rs 1,200 crore in the current fiscal.
The government is looking at this windfall as means to fund its several schemes.
Bihar’s education minister Ashok Choudhary said the government was committed to bring transparency in the Bihar School Examination Board which was mired in controversy over the toppers’ scam, as everything would be made online in the Board on the CBSE pattern.
The alcohol ban in Bihar has its social benefits, but the economic loss incurred due to this has left the ‘unpaid’ school teachers in the lurch for the past 6 months.
