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Former West Bengal government school teachers threaten fresh agitation
They have sought the release of the names of non-tainted candidates recruited in 2016 and supernumerary posts for them to take fresh exams as per a Supreme Court order
Former West Bengal government school teachers, whose appointments the Supreme Court cancelled in April in the bribe-for-job case, threatened a fresh agitation after police on Monday stopped them from marching to the state secretariat to meet chief minister Mamata Banerjee to discuss their demands. They have sought the release of the names of non-tainted candidates recruited in 2016 and supernumerary posts for them to take fresh exams as per the Supreme Court order.
A section of the agitators argued that they neither have the age on their side nor the mental state to compete with younger people for jobs they legitimately got in 2016. “We want the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) to release the list of all non-tainted teachers immediately. Only that can resolve this crisis,” said Chinmoy Mondal, a leader of the ex-teachers.
State chief secretary Manoj Pant was among the officials the agitators met and told them nobody could bypass the recruitment test.
Hours before the meeting at a police office, agitators were stopped from marching to the secretariat. Police put up 10-feet steel barricades at five locations to prevent the march, leading to the suspension of vehicular movement.
Suman Biswas, another agitation leader, said they will not hold more meetings with the government. “Our movement will be on the streets from now on.”
The Calcutta high court separately heard the state government’s arguments against its July 10 order upholding a July 7 single bench order debarring specifically identified tainted teachers from taking the retest. On July 10, it ordered the applications of the identified teachers to be rejected. The single bench order quoted the Supreme Court’s April 17 directive in the bribe-for-job case.
The Supreme Court on April 3 cancelled the 2016 appointments of 25,752 school teachers and non-teaching staff. On April 17, the court said that only the non-tainted teachers may be allowed to continue in service until December 31 but they must take a fresh selection test. It allowed age-limit relaxations for them.
A notification for the fresh examination was published on May 30. It did not specify that only non-tainted teachers could appear for it.
Days before the notification, Banerjee announced additional posts for the same selection process. The test will be conducted to fill up over 44,000 posts.
Petitions filed in the high court alleged that WBSSC violated the 2016 recruitment rules and altered the weightage criteria for different components in the fresh selection process.
