KOLKATA: Around 500 ‘eligible’ teachers, whose jobs were annulled following a Supreme Court order which invalidated the jobs of around 26,000 teachers, rallied in the city on Thursday demanding they should not be penalised and clubbed with the ‘tainted’.
While one rally reached Esplanade via Central Avenue, covering a distance of over 2 km, another rally was taken out in Sealdah and converged at the same venue. A strong police force was present escorting the two rallies, but there was no untoward incident as the teachers holding placards reading ‘We want back our job’ and ‘SSC should come out with the list of tainted/untainted candidates’ walked on.
Expressing solidarity with the teachers rendered jobless following the Supreme Court order, opposition BJP, CPI(M) and Congress staged separate protest rallies in the city demanding the resignation of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, holding her responsible for the uncertain future staring into the face of thousands of ‘untainted’ candidates.
The rallyists also condemned police action against eligible teachers on Wednesday when they went to the office of District Inspector (DI) of School, Kasba, to submit a memorandum.
BJP North Kolkata district unit president Tamaghna Ghosh staged a demonstration in front of Amherst Street police station where around 200 saffron party supporters assembled, shouting slogans against the Mamata Banerjee administration, the SSC and the education department
According to Mehboob Mondal, one of the spokespersons of ‘Jogyo Sikshak Manch’ (Eligible Teachers Forum), the teachers hit the streets to voice the demands of deserving teachers that they should not be penalised for the failure of the School Service Commission (SSC) to differentiate between the deserving and tainted candidates who sat for the recruitment tests in 2016 and got appointment letters.
“We were lathi-charged by police for handing over a deputation to the office of District Inspector of Education in the city and kicked by a police officer. We can’t even protest democratically against the snatching of our jobs due to large-scale corruption by the state government. So where should we go now? We are on the roads finding no other alternative,” Mondal alleged.
