Guj Assembly passes Service Commission Bill; Cong protests

Opposition Congress in protest of the Gujarat State Service Commission Bill 2013 staged a walk out from the Assembly, saying it would lead to privatisation of primary and secondary education in the state.
The Bill, passed by the voice vote in the Assembly in the absence of Congress MLAs, provides setting up of a Commission for the recruitment of teachers in all grant-in-aid schools in Gujarat.
"This bill will take away the rights of the management of the grant-in-aid schools to appoint teachers and principals in their schools in which they have invested crore of rupees, over a period of time, for providing quality education," Congress MLA from Danilimda Shailesh Parmar told reporters outside the House.

He alleged that the Bill would "accelerate" the process of privatisation of primary and secondary education in the state.
"To maintain quality of education by appointing teachers of their choice, these schools will turn into non-granted schools and this will lead to privatisation of education and consequently common people will face the burden in the form of fee hikes", Parmar said.
Earlier, the legislation was introduced in the House during the extended time by Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, which was opposed by Congress Chief Whip Balwantsinh Rajput who demanded that the Bill be sent back to the Privilege Committee for review and re-introduced.

However, Speaker Vaju Vala rejected the demand, following which the Congress MLAs present in the House, walked out of the Assembly in protest and later staged a demonstration outside the premises raising anti-government slogans.
Introducing the bill Chudasama said, "With a view to improve the quality of teachers recruited in the grant-in-aid schools, a centralised arrangement in the form of an independent Commission is felt necessary".