Protesting teachers’ march to West Bengal Secretariat halted amid heavy security

Kolkata 

Thousands of teaching and non-teaching staffers of West Bengal government schools, whose jobs were terminated after the Supreme Court order on April 3, marched to the State Secretariat on Monday. Though they were stopped midway, a group of 20 protesters was allowed to meet Chief Secretary Manoj Pant at Howrah Police Line in Shibpur.

Monday’s march came in response to the West Bengal School Service Commission starting a fresh recruitment process as per the apex court order. The last date to submit the application was to end on Monday but the WBSSC extended it to July 21.

Tight security arrangements were made outside the secretariat and the surrounding areas. A contingent of police and Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel, armed with water cannons, were deployed to stop the protesters. They clashed with the police at several locations while trying to cross the barricades.

According to the representatives of ‘Joggya Sikkhak Sikkhika Adhikar Mancha’ (Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum), they did not fill out the form for fresh recruitment. “The government is standing beside the people who acquired jobs dishonestly through money, and the ones who deserved it through merit are being deprived and ignored. This is a shame on the administration,” Chinmoy Mondal, a representative of JSSAM, said during the march.

The protesters have been demanding that the government publish the OMR (optical mark recognition) sheets of the 2016 examination, along with a complete list of “untainted” candidates, and an unconditional reinstatement of their jobs.

“The Chief Secretary and Education Secretary were present at the meeting. But the meeting remained inconclusive,” Mehboob Mondal, a representative of the JSSAM, said.

The protesters said the Chief Secretary only gave them 10 minutes to discuss the issue, and the government is conducting their own internal meeting with the representatives. The teachers claimed that accessing the list of tainted and untainted teachers is their right and is not a “handout” by the government. They also vowed to boycott all indoor meetings if no concrete solution on publishing the list of “untainted” appointees is reached by Monday midnight.

Meanwhile, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari wrote a letter addressing the teachers on social media and stated that the BJP stands by them. “Today, once again, your call for the Nabanna campaign remained unfulfilled… Mamata Banerjee knows very well how to scatter your movement with deceit and false promises,” Mr. Adhikari wrote on X.

Responding to it, Trinamool Congress spokesperson, Kunal Ghosh said that political parties are trying to use the teachers’ cause to do politics. “State government is trying in its own way. We are with the deserving teachers,” Mr. Ghosh said.