We get zero benefits: Why Maharashtra Samagra Shiksha staff are threatening hunger strike at Azad Maidan

Thousands of contractual employees associated with the Samagra Shiksha scheme in Maharashtra have decided, in a big way, to stage an indefinite hunger strike at Azad Maidan, Mumbai, starting from March 9 to get their job security.

A recent letter from Samagra Shiksha Sangharsh Samiti to School Education and Sports Minister Dada Bhuse has given the state government a deadline till March 7 to issue a government resolution (GR) regularising the remaining 3, 378 staff members.

The letter is a repercussion of a huge demonstration in Nagpur during the Winter Session of the Legislative Assembly, when employees of 13 different cadres including resource persons, data operators, and engineers protested demanding the end of the alleged injustice.

Samagra Shiksha is the flagship, a major centrally sponsored scheme in Maharashtra which is covering the school education from pre-school till the finishing of Class 12.

It is a unified scheme which combines the three different former schemes i.e. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) that is directed towards providing elementary education; Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) whose objective is to develop secondary education; Teacher Education (TE) designed to support State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) and District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs).

In October 2024 the state government regularised a total of 3, 000 employees out of which nearly half were employees working for differently abled children. But 3, 378 employees were still left out.

"We have been in this profession for 25 years. We are the people on the ground who bring the RTE Act to life, " said Yogita Balakshe, the state president of the Samiti.

"If you can regularise 50 per cent of the staff, why this injustice toward the rest of us? Many of us are nearing retirement; if we retire now, we get zero benefits and are forced to work as security guards to survive."

The regularisation issue

The regularisation issue stems from the financial manual established in 2004 by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, which discouraged the creation of permanent positions and instead preferred contractual or deputation hiring. For more than 20 years, Maharashtra has avoided permanent hiring by granting these employees a one-day break every six months to reset their contractual status.

In October 2024, a study committee was formed to look into regularising all staff. On March 4, 2025, A new GR modified the committee and ordered a final report within three months.

Balakshe said, “Even though the report of the committee has now been submitted, no GR has been released yet. We will not leave Azad Maidan before a GR in our favour is released, because this is our third protest in a year.”

The letter to the minister added that the previous protests were suspended as government representatives assured that the issue would be resolved.