During the coronavirus pandemic, many people have lost their jobs as the nation has been brought to a standstill due to the lockdown imposed by the Indian government. India is a country where finding a job is not easy on account of its huge population and good competition but you get the shock of your lifetime to know that there is one teacher Anamika Shukla who has been teaching in 25 schools for the past 13 months and has earned around Rs. 1 crore from these schools as her salary.
What is more shocking is the fact that she is not doing it for one or two schools but 25 schools of different districts. She is registered as a full time science teacher in Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) which is a residential school for girls who belong from poor sections of the society and the appointment of teachers is carried out on the contract basis. If we talk about the salary, usually a teacher is paid around Rs. 30K per month.
As per the records, Anamika Shukla is from Mainpuri and was working in KGBV, Raebareli till the month of February 2020 when the forgery was caught. Anand Prakash who is the basic education officer in Raebareli said that though the letter issued by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Office which directed six districts to investigate about Anamika Shukla doesn’t included Raebareli’s name, they still searched on their level and saw that a woman was working by that name at KGBV, Raebareli, as well but she didn’t reply to the notice that was issued to her.
The matter caught everybody’s attention when the exercise to create a digital database of teachers started. This database was being built on the Manav Sampada portal and various details of the teachers were entered in this database. When the database got completed, the authorities noticed that a teacher with the same name and same details is being registered in 25 schools.
Vijay Kiran Anand, the director general of school education, stated that it is a matter of big surprise that a person has been able to commit such a fraud for so long despite the fact that real-time monitoring is taking place in primary schools of Uttar Pradesh. It is difficult to understand how a teacher has marked her attendance at different locations as the attendance is marked online at Prerna portal.
The inquiry has been delayed a lot due to lockdown and it is still to be found out whether she was using the same bank account for receiving salaries from all the schools.
It will be quite interesting to know who Anamika Shukla is and how she managed it all. Let’s wait and watch!