Pay Cut Warning Sent To Dead Teachers Over Attendance In Madhya Pradesh

In a bizarre episode that could put even a horror-comedy script to shame, the Education Department in Madhya Pradesh's Rewa has managed a rare administrative feat sending e-attendance notices to three teachers who died months and even years ago, warning them that if they didn't start marking attendance on the app within three days, their salaries would be deducted.

In Rewa's official records, the dead were still "present," but their e-attendance was marked absent.

The department, which recently tightened its stance on the new e-attendance system in Madhya Pradesh's government schools, issued notices to over 1,500 teachers for not marking daily attendance. Buried inside this pile were three teachers who had long been buried in real life.

The department, which has recently intensified monitoring under the newly implemented e-attendance system, sent strict warnings asking teachers to explain within three days why they were not marking attendance on the mobile app, failing which their salaries would be deducted. In this digital-age drama, the Education Department forgot one small step before issuing notices checking who was still alive.

Among the names on the list were three teachers who had died - Devta Din Kol, who died in 2023; Chhotelal Saket, who died earlier this year, and Ramgarib Deepankar, also dead. Yet, all three were served notices that essentially asked them to "mark attendance or face salary cuts."

The irony was hard to miss - the department had declared them "absent" on the app, but on paper they continued to remain very much "present" in government records. The episode raises uncomfortable questions if they were absent on the app, were they also showing as present on the payroll?

Officials, however, moved quickly to term the entire fiasco a "data update error."

District Education Officer Ram Raj Mishra admitted that several entries on the education portal had not been updated and blamed the lapse on outdated information uploaded by cluster principals.

He assured that the error would be rectified soon, calling it an "oversight" rather than an indication of any deeper malpractice. But the explanation has done little to soften criticism, especially as the department continues to enforce strict compliance on the living while failing to verify basic records of the deceased.

The e-attendance system was introduced across government schools in Madhya Pradesh to ensure transparency and accountability. Initially met with resistance from teachers, the department has now adopted a tougher stance, issuing notices en masse to anyone who failed to punch in digitally.

But the inclusion of dead teachers in this crackdown has turned the drive into a spectacle, a reminder that while the state may be going digital, its data still seems stuck in the afterlife.
The incident has triggered embarrassment within the Education Department, which now finds itself answering questions about its own functioning.