Bengaluru (DHNS) Second year pre-university students, already agitated over the chemistry question paper leak fiasco, are now staring at a possible boycott of their answer scripts by evaluators.

Talks between the Karnataka State PU?Colleges Lecturers Association and the State government on the latter’s demand that they be given better pay scale failed on Friday.

The association, with 30,000 lecturers as its members, has threatened to boycott evaluation if the recommendation of the report submitted by IAS?officer G?Kumar Naik to the government in 2011 is not implemented.

According to JD(S)?MLC Basavaraj Horatti, who represents the teachers’ constituency, it may require Rs 50 to Rs 60 crore to raise the salary of PU teachers.

The Naik report has also recommended a pay structure revision for schoolteachers, which may require an additional Rs 130 crore, Horatti said.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had convened a meeting of the representatives of the association to convince them not to boycott evaluation. Siddaramaiah told the representatives that they attend the evaluation duty and the government would consider their demands at a later stage. The PU board has scheduled the commencement of preliminary work for evaluation from April 3 and the actual evaluation should begin on April 5.

The chief minister said the interest of the students needed to be safeguarded first and they would be put to inconvenience if the evaluation work was affected. Any delay in the results would affect the future of the students as they would be applying for admissions to various institutions across the country in the coming months.

However, the lecturers said they had waited for several years for a hike in their pay. Lecturers in the State were getting around Rs 10,000 less as salary, compared with their counterparts in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra.

The Kumar Naik committee recommended correction of the disparities. PU lecturers have been classified into Class-2 grade, while tahsildars, assistant executive engineers, block education officers had been recently elevated to Class-1 and their pay scale revised, the lecturers said.

Association president Thimmaiah Purle told reporters that Friday’s talks had failed. “We will convene a meeting of the office-bearers and the district presidents in a day or two and decide on our next step of action,” Purle said. Siddaramaiah held a separate meeting with the MLCs, who represent the teachers’ constituency, to discuss the demands of schoolteachers. MLCs Basavaraj?Horatti, V?S?Ugrappa, Puttanna, G?Madhusudhan, Ramachandra Gowda and Ganesh Karnic were present.

Photo credit: DHNS