Agartala, July 17: The Tripura Congress has urged the state government to exempt government school teachers from the upcoming Census 2027 exercise, arguing that deploying them for enumeration work would further disrupt academic activities in schools already grappling with a severe shortage of teaching staff.
In a letter addressed to Chief Minister Manik Saha, Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President Asish Kumar Saha said the government must engage contractual staff or other personnel for census duties instead of teachers. He pointed out that the state frequently speaks about improving educational standards, but government schools continue to suffer from an alarming shortage of teachers.
Saha, a former MLA, claimed that nearly 18,000 teaching posts across different levels remain vacant in Tripura. Citing a NITI Aayog report, he said more than 400 government schools are functioning with only a single teacher, severely affecting classroom teaching. He added that many schools in remote and tribal-dominated areas have either been closed or are struggling to operate due to the shortage of teaching and non-teaching staff.
The Congress leader also questioned the government’s decision to introduce pre-primary and nursery sections in 450 schools despite the existing staff crunch. According to him, assigning nearly 9,000 government school teachers to census work would significantly hamper academic activities and further weaken the state’s education system.
“Teachers should primarily focus on educating students rather than being repeatedly assigned to administrative responsibilities such as election duties, electoral roll revisions and census work,” Saha said. He also demanded an immediate and transparent recruitment drive to fill vacant teaching posts across government schools.
Meanwhile, Tripura Director of Census Operations Ratan Biswas announced that the first phase of the Census 2027 will begin with the Self-Enumeration process from July 18 to July 31, followed by the House Listing and House Enumeration exercise from August 1 to August 30. During this period, enumerators and supervisors—most of whom are school teachers—will visit every household to collect information on families and residential buildings.
Officials said the second phase, Population Enumeration, is scheduled for February 2027, when detailed socio-economic information of every individual will be collected. Training of thousands of enumerators and supervisors has already been completed ahead of the nationwide census exercise.
