Thousands of school teachers of West Bengal, rendered jobless by a Supreme Court order, on Thursday gheraoed the state education department headquarters in Salt Lake, demanding that the government take legal steps for reinstatement of their services.

As the protestors gathered in front of Bikash Bhavan, disrupting traffic movement in the busy Karunamoyee area in Salt Lake, police personnel tried to stop them. A section of the agitators, however, scaled the wall and entered the compound of Bikash Bhavan.

Calling for an immediate dialogue with chief minister Mamata Banerjee, the teachers demanded that the state government take legal steps so that they could get back the jobs they lost following the Supreme Court’s order of April 3.

“We will not move from this place till the state takes legal steps to make jobs of all deserving teachers permanent. We demand that the government make us a party to the review petition to be filed in the Supreme Court, as we are also stakeholders,” Subhankar Ghoshal, spokesperson of one of the protesting teachers, told media sources. 

Mehboob Mondal, another member of the forum that organised the protest, asserted that none of the protesting teachers will go for the recruitment test again.

“Will the SSC chairman and other officials write the exams they had cracked earlier? Will the education minister seek re-election before the scheduled date? We know the SSC has to comply with the court order. But they are responsible for the system being termed tainted by the apex court. It is their duty to resolve the issue,” Mondal said.

Altogether 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff of state-sponsored and -aided schools lost their jobs after the apex court on April 3 found large-scale irregularities in the 2016 recruitment process and scrapped the entire panel.

The jobless people claimed that the reason behind their plight was the inability of the School Service Commission (SSC), which appointed them, to differentiate between the candidates who secured employment through fraudulent means and those who did not.

The top court also directed the state to initiate a fresh recruitment process by May 31 and complete the entire exercise by December 31.

SSC chairman Siddhartha Majumdar, who was escorted through the rear gate of the building during the chaos, could not be contacted for his comments.

Majumdar earlier said the commission will issue the notification for conducting the 2016 recruitment test afresh, and all the 22 lakh teaching and non-teaching candidates, who had written the papers during that time, can again apply if they produce the valid documents.

The SSC already sent lists of 15,304 “not specifically tainted”, which means eligible, teachers to the District Inspector of Schools across the state.

An estimated 1,804 teachers, among the 25,753 rendered jobless, have not been included in the list, making them “tainted”.

The protestors who gheraoed Bikash Bhavan also included these ‘tainted’ teachers.

A large contingent of police was present in the area, and no force was used to disperse the protestors, an officer said.

He said the chairman of Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation Sabyasachi Dutta reached the spot and talked to the protestors for some time before leaving.

Bidhannagar Mayor Krishna Chakraborty also came there and faced the slogan-shouting protestors. She, however, pacified them and talked to them.

Also read: Bengal SSC urges SC to review verdict annulling jobs of 25,753 school staff