Bhubaneswar: After students, it is the teachers in elementary and upper primary government schools of Orissa who will have to follow a dress code from September 15.

The state school and mass education department on Thursday sent instructions to all elementary and upper primary schools, asking male teachers to wear black pants and sky blue shirts while woman teachers will wear pink saris and black blouses, a senior official of the department said.

"There is a relaxation for male teachers who are wearing dhotis and female teachers donning salwar kurtas. They can continue with these but in the prescribed colors," the department's secretary Aparajita Sarangi told sources.

Orissa has 56,000 elementary and upper primary schools and 1.60 lakh teachers.

The government has made dress code mandatory after it got spontaneous response from thousands of teachers in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Berhampur who came out of their own and started wearing the uniforms, she said.

"Initially we had asked the teachers of three education districts of Bhubaneswar, Berhampur and Cuttack to adhere to dress code by August 15 on an experimental basis. But we observed teachers of other districts too started adopting it on their own," she said.

Of the state's 75 education districts, teachers in 20 districts are already adhering to the new dress code, Sarangi said.

Orissa first introduced dress code for girls in government colleges in 2005.

The girls have been wearing salwar kameez and the boys full-sleeved shirts and trousers in the colors left to be decided by the college authorities. IANS