The Gujarat government has launched an online portal for schoolteachers to help them avail provident funds, get their leaves sanctioned, recover salary arrears and resolve other service-related issues.Named ‘Seva Samadhan’, the portal aims to help nearly three lakh teachers spend more time in classrooms than in government offices, officials said. The portal can be accessed even from a smartphone, thus cutting down the red tape associated with government processes, they added.“Issues arising during the entire span of a teacher’s service journey, from appointment to retirement, are consolidated into one portal, which is accessible from anywhere”, said one of them.The officials said teachers spend an estimated six months or more visiting government offices to resolve service-related issues. One of the most common issues was the migration of fixed-pay teachers hired as vidya sahayaks to permanent staffers.The Directorate of Primary Education hires teachers as Vidya Sahayaks for a fixed term of five years after which they are made permanent on a higher pay grade. According to the Akhil Bharatiya Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh, an RSS-affiliated teachers’ body, at least 5,500 teachers were due for full grade pay this year. Of them, around 250 had approached the association to escalate their issue to the government.Education department officials said teachers would get ‘demotivated’, which would impact their performance in the classroom, if the pay grades they were eligible for were not effected, entitled leaves or leave travel allowance not processed, and so on.“The cumulative effect was lost teaching time, delayed resolution of legitimate service matters, and a governance process that ran on scattered paper trails rather than accountable digital records. The Seva Samadhan portal was conceived to directly address this gap. It is a transparent, paperless and time-bound resolution and monitoring of pending issues related to service matters. It is to be used as a single, accountable digital channel that replaces scattered paper-based follow-ups with one structured online workflow for every teacher’s service matter,” Commissioner of Schools Anand Patel told The Indian Express.The Government Resolution issued last week states, “The main objective of this portal is to free teachers from administrative complications and focus only on education and teaching (classroom-first) and to get rid of visiting various offices physically”.Issues with physical paperwork Paper-based processes had their issues, say officials. Teachers could not track where an application was stuck; there would be no audit trail; practices across the state’s 34 districts would differ; there were “administrative blind spots” where the education department itself lacked a consolidated, real-time picture of pending grievances, making systematic monitoring difficult. Story continues below this adMitesh Bhatt, the teachers’ body president, told this newspaper that the association had pressed the government to look into teachers’ rightful claims for which they run from pillar to post. “We had requested the state government that a timely redressal should not be viewed as a discretionary courtesy, but as a matter of teachers’ welfare. Delays in settling a rightful service claim have a direct bearing on a teacher’s financial security and motivation, and by extension, on the quality of education delivered in the classroom.”“This month, nearly 5,500 teachers will be reaching the full pay grade. Nearly 250 teachers approached us for delays from the trust in the case of grant-in-aid schoolteachers. In districts like Dahod and Panchmahal, female teachers are facing major issues in full pay scale, we were informed,” Bhatt added.On the timing of the implementation, Commissioner Patel said, “This is a gift to all the teachers ahead of Teachers’ Day.”“A teacher free from administrative follow-up can devote full attention to the classroom. The portal converts this conviction into a working system. It is a single digital window through which a teacher can raise a service issue from anywhere, track it at every stage, and receive a documented, policy-based decision,” Patel added.Story continues below this adThe portal can be accessed with an OTP-based login. It addresses 10 service issues such as fixed-pay to permanent status, higher pay scale migrations, those related to Central Provident Fund and General Provident Fund, leave sanctions, pensions, arrears and Leave Travel Concession.An OTP-based login with ‘Teacher Code’ ensures every application reaches the correct competent officer (DPEO/DEO/AO) directly, with a unique application number and SMS intimation issued at submission.For end-to-end visibility, a defined four-step flow — submission, verification, policy-based decision with a signed order, and teacher feedback — is tracked online under ‘My Issues’, which gives out the status of the application.Teacher-driven closure: An application is closed only when a teacher marks ‘Satisfied’, with a ‘Keep Open’ option for continued review.Story continues below this adEven for the Education Department, a systematic routing is expected as every application will reach the right competent officer, with uniform digital records of application, decision and order in one place along with easily identifiable duplicate representations and a structured, GR-based review process at every level.