MUMBAI: Mumbai has emerged as the top performer in Maharashtra’s ongoing drive to digitise employment records of education department staff, with nearly 60% of employee data uploaded so far.The state-wide exercise covers both teaching and non-teaching staff across government and aided institutions. Employees were required to upload documents such as appointment orders, joining reports, approval letters and service records to the government’s Shalarth portal. The deadline for completing submissions was September 20.Progress across the state, however, remains uneven. Several districts have recorded extremely low levels of compliance, with Dhule, Akola and Solapur each digitising less than 1% of employee records. In contrast, Mumbai’s relatively higher completion rate places it well above the state average.The digitisation drive is focused largely on employees appointed before 2016, when creating a Shalarth ID was not mandatory. As a result, records for many earlier appointments continue to exist only in physical form at schools and education offices, complicating verification and audit processes.Shalarth is the state government’s centralised online system used to maintain salary, service and financial details of education department employees. The current exercise follows scrutiny of the portal after irregularities were flagged in the creation and use of Shalarth IDs.By digitising legacy records and linking them to verified employee profiles, the exercise seeks to consolidate employee data, identify discrepancies and bring uniformity to records that are currently scattered across multiple administrative levels.In districts where uploads remain negligible, the absence of digitised records continues to pose challenges for record verification, audits and administrative processes, highlighting the uneven pace of implementation across Maharashtra.
