After the Bharatiya Janata Party, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, began the campaign of using the word 'chowkidar' as a prefix, a similar campaign has been started by thousands of teachers in Assam, who have begun using the word "driver" as a prefix ahead of their names.
However, the latter campaign has been started as a form of protest against Assam education minister Siddhartha Bhattacharya.
This innovative step has been taken up by over 40,000 teachers who have been recruited through the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) in the state. These teachers are commonly known as TET teachers. Their protest campaign began on Friday, after Bhattacharya compared the pass certificate of the TET with a driving license in a live programme on All India Radio, Guwahati a day earlier.
Bhattacharya, while taking live questions during the programme, replied to a question by a TET teacher from Barpeta about regularisation of jobs. He said that TET teachers have to renew their "licence" (the pass certificate of the TET exam) to continue their jobs, just like driving licences need to be renewed from time to time.