The Bihar cabinet on Tuesday approved the implementation of a domicile policy in the recruitment of school teachers, reserving around 85 per cent of posts for “native residents” of the state.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had announced on Monday that the policy would be enforced for the upcoming teacher recruitment drives. The decision comes months ahead of the state assembly elections, due later this year, and is seen as politically significant.
“The proposal for giving preference to native residents of the state in teachers’ recruitment exams was cleared,” Additional Chief Secretary (Cabinet Secretariat) S Siddharth said following the cabinet meeting.
He explained that more than half of the seats were already reserved for the state’s residents through existing quotas for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backwards Classes, and Extremely Backwards Classes, which account for nearly 50 per cent, as well as an additional 10 per cent reserved for economically weaker sections.
A separate 35 per cent quota for women is also limited to residents of Bihar. “Of the remaining seats, 40 per cent shall now be reserved for native residents of Bihar who completed their class 10 and class 12 in the state. So the quota for native residents effectively will be more than 85 per cent,” Siddharth said.
The issue has triggered widespread protests in recent months. Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Yadav has promised “100 per cent domicile” if the Rashtriya Janata Dal forms the next government. Union Minister Chirag Paswan has also backed the demand. On 1 August, large numbers of young people staged a demonstration in Patna over the policy.
The cabinet also approved a series of measures to increase honorariums for various categories of state employees. The monthly pay for 2,350 physical education teachers in government schools will rise from ₹8,000 to ₹16,000, with an annual increment of ₹400. Around 6,000 night guards in secondary and higher secondary schools in Patna will see their monthly pay increase from ₹6,000 to ₹10,000.
In addition, 2.18 lakh cooks working under the mid-day meal programme in the Education Department will have their monthly honorarium doubled from ₹1,650 to ₹3,300.
Incentives for Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) will increase from ₹1,000 to ₹3,000, while Mamata Health Workers will now receive ₹600 per delivery, up from ₹300.
Under the Bihar Lohiya Swachh Abhiyan in rural areas, monthly incentives for sanitation workers will rise to ₹5,000 and for supervisors to ₹9,000.
The cabinet also approved the creation of digital libraries in every panchayat in the state, each equipped with at least 10 computers for public use.
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