Nagaland: RMSA Teachers’ Protest Enters Seventh Day Amid Escalating Tensions
Despite heavy rain, the 367 affected teachers, who are posted in government high schools across 17 districts, continued their agitation...........
KOHIMA – The indefinite sit-in protest by the Nagaland Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) Teachers’ Association, representing the 2016 batch, has entered its seventh day with demonstrators marching to the Nagaland Civil Secretariat in Kohima.
Despite heavy rain, the 367 affected teachers, who are posted in government high schools across 17 districts, continued their agitation, demanding that the state government implement Supreme Court-mandated pay parity and regularize their services. The association has accused authorities of delay tactics and intimidation while stressing that their movement will remain peaceful.
The protest began on September 8 outside the Directorate of School Education, following a statewide class boycott from September 1 and a pen-down strike in late August. The agitation has disrupted classes in 133 schools, affecting thousands of students. Many of the teachers, some accompanied by their children, have raised slogans urging the government to respect judicial orders, while highlighting their financial hardships.
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The root of the dispute lies in the non-implementation of a Gauhati High Court judgment from March 2022, upheld by the Supreme Court in May 2025, which directed the regularization of RMSA-2016 teachers with pay and benefits equivalent to state cadre employees.
Recruited under the centrally sponsored RMSA scheme in 2016, the graduate teachers were promised treatment on par with earlier RMSA and SSA batches but were instead placed on contractual terms. Their fixed salaries, currently Rs 25,000 per month, were cut from Rs 31,315 in 2018, and they have been denied increments, dearness allowance, and arrears.
Many allege that they have been waiting for salaries for months at a time and have had to fund their own legal battle against the state from meager earnings. The NRMSATA leadership described the government’s stance as a betrayal of justice and appealed to civil society for support, which has since come from student bodies such as the Naga Students’ Federation and several tribal organizations.
Tensions escalated on September 15 when six teachers received transfer and repatriation orders in the middle of the sit-in, a move that the NRMSATA condemned as intimidation. The Department of School Education, however, defended its position by pointing out that the teachers were engaged under a centrally sponsored scheme and not as state cadre employees, while adding that the state had filed a review petition in the Supreme Court on August 14. Officials have appealed for the strike to be called off in the interest of students and warned that a “No Work, No Pay” policy may be enforced.
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A tripartite meeting on September 11 involving the government, NRMSATA, and the All Nagaland School Teachers’ Association ended without resolution, leading the protesters to shift their sit-in to the Civil Secretariat. The Naga Students’ Federation has since stepped in as mediator, arranging talks with the Adviser for School Education on September 17. This intervention prompted the teachers to temporarily postpone their planned hunger strike, but they remain adamant that the protest will continue until their demands are met.
The standoff highlights deeper problems in Nagaland’s education sector, including more than 1,000 vacant teaching posts, stretched pupil-teacher ratios, rising dropout rates, and corruption scandals such as the Rs 12.79 crore education scam currently under investigation.
As the agitation continues into its second week, the government faces mounting pressure to resolve the crisis, with teachers vowing to persist until “equal pay for equal work” is secured and their rights as educators are recognized.
