Delhi High Court has chastised civic authorities for assigning duties to government schoolteachers that are “not remotely” connected to imparting education.

Municipal corporations cannot ask school principals and teachers to perform tasks outside the ambit of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act and its rules, Justice C. Hari Shankar held.

He set aside several notifications issued by civic bodies requiring principals and teachers to conduct household surveys and help prepare ward education registers.

Authorities are justified in asking teachers to help their pupils open bank accounts and link them to their Aadhaar numbers, the court accepted. But it clarified that this cannot be made “mandatory”; nor can the teachers be punished for failing to provide such help adequately.

“There is a prevalent practice, in recent times, of schools assigning to teachers duties and tasks not remotely connected to imparting of education. This, in the opinion of this court, is impermissible and unconscionable,” it said.

The ruling came on a petition from the Akhil Delhi Prathmik Shikshak Sangh, an association of teachers of schools run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

The court agreed that under the RTE Act and its rules, it was the local authority’s job to maintain the ward education register and conduct household surveys.

“No doubt, the local authority could justifiably request assistance from the principal and the teachers of the schools so that the carrying out of the said exercise is facilitated,” it said.

“That would not, however, justify issuance by any of the municipal corporations of directives to the teachers and the principals to mandatorily carry out the said exercise, or even to assist or participate therein, under pain of punitive consequences for default.”

The court said: “Education is a serious affair, and teachers are justifiably regarded as discharging divine duties, nourishing and nurturing the minds of tomorrow. Single-minded devotion and blind pursuit of excellence must guide every educator. It is no less than an affront, therefore, to belabour teachers with tasks which deflect, detract and distract from the noble task of imparting education.”

Counsel for the Delhi government had argued that the extra tasks assigned to the teachers were ancillary to their primary duty of imparting education.