Kolkata: A section of teachers who lost their jobs following a Supreme Court judgment which held that the whole appointment process was tainted Thursday began a relay hunger strike demanding that the School Service Commission (SSC) demarcate the tainted and untainted teachers and publish the OMR sheet details immediately.
Several senior BJP leaders, including former Calcutta High Court judge turned BJP MP Abhijit Gangopadhyay, met the teachers who are on a relay hunger strike outside the West Bengal School Service Commission office.
The teachers are part of the SSC 2016 Recruitment Test batch of around 26,000 candidates whose jobs were invalidated by the Supreme Court April 3 as the apex court termed the entire selection exercise “vitiated and tainted”.
Apart from Gangopadhyay, BJP leader Roopa Ganguly, state BJP youth wing chief Indranil Khan and party’s cultural cell chief Rudranil Ghosh met the demonstrators.
Demanding that the SSC demarcate the tainted and untainted teachers and publish the OMR sheet details immediately, the agitating teachers sat before the SSC office at ‘Acharya Bhavan’ where they also held placards protesting police action against their compatriots at the district inspector (DI) of schools’ office at Kasba in south Kolkata.
“Our agitation will continue till the SSC comes clean. Why are they withholding OMR sheets of tainted/untainted candidates? Had they furnished the exact figures to the Supreme Court and earlier Calcutta high court, our world would not have come crashing down,” Suman Biswas, an agitating teacher of Nakasipara High School, whose job was also axed following the SC order, told reporters at the venue.
One of the teachers began the relay hunger strike agitation demanding an immediate end to stalemate and publication of OMR sheet list which continued.
Gangopadhyay the BJP MP from Tamluk blamed the state administration and its wings for their plight and promised every support to the fasting teachers asserting the party and he stood by them.
The agitating teachers have been holding a sit-in outside the SSC office building since Wednesday night to protest the loss of jobs and police action against their compatriots.
Noting that the police have lodged cases against the protesting teachers over Wednesday’s protest at Kasba, Gangopadhyay said that this should not have been done.
“Cases have been lodged against innocent teachers who lost their jobs for the illegal acts of others,” the BJP MP told reporters.
Maintaining that he had not gone to meet Education minister Bratya Basu on Wednesday in protest against the police action, he said that the BJP leadership was with him in his decision.
Gangopadhyay said that he, along with former Rajya Sabha MP Roopa Ganguly, came to the protest site to express solidarity with the teachers and other staff who lost their jobs.
Gangopadhyay, as a judge of the Calcutta High Court, had ordered a CBI investigation in November 2021 into alleged irregularities in the recruitment process.
He had also ordered the termination of more than 25,000 jobs of teaching and non-teaching staff in West Bengal government-run and -aided schools after finding irregularities in the process.
This order was upheld by a division bench of the high court and thereafter by the Supreme Court.
BJYM state unit president Indranil Khan also visited the venue near the SSC office and vowed to launch a sit-in protest against the SSC and state government if urgent action is not taken to address the issue and action taken against the police.
Veteran TMC leader and senior state minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay told PTI he shared the anguish of the teachers but it has to be kept in mind that they cannot forcibly enter a state government office breaking the lock.
“We share their anguish. But one has to keep in mind that in the DI office important documents of teachers, including retired teachers are kept and the gatecrashing of a group of people could lead to loss, tampering and damage of their service records and affect their PF/gratuity benefits,” he said.
The Supreme Court on April 3 upheld a 2024 Calcutta High Court judgment annulling the recruitment of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff appointed through a recruitment drive by SSC in 2016, terming the entire selection process “vitiated and tainted”.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and some others, who held positions in the state’s SSC when the irregularities in the recruitment process took place.
PTI
