Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has handed over the additional responsibility of the Rural Development and District Panchayati Raj department to Minister of State for Education Vasudev Devnani. Devnani would be sharing this responsibility with minister of state for the department Babulal Verma.

The change was announced late on Wednesday night and is an effort to find a solution to a controversy over the transfer of teachers in primary schools. For almost more than a month now, the two departments have been fighting over the right of transferring the teachers. While the Education department wanted to decide upon the transfers, claiming that the teachers belonged to the department, the Panchayati Raj department wanted to have a say in the matter as primary schools fell under it.

Though officially the respective work to be handled by the two ministers of state has not been specified as yet, it is believed that Devnani’s role in the portfolio would be limited to work related to the transfer of teachers. “The dispute between the two departments was going on for quite some time and the only way out seemed to be handing over both the departments to the same minister. The Chief Minister has done just that and now Devnani would look into the transfer of primary teachers,” confirmed a senior Government official.

Transfer of about 50,000 teachers is pending and it is now expected that Devnani would soon issue orders and pass on transfer notices to district-level offices. With this change in the Cabinet, it is expected that the Principal Secretary of the Education department would also get the additional responsibility of district Panchayat department.

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