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Police crackdown on job applicants fans row in Bengal
Late on Thursday, a huge contingent of Bidhannagar police removed more than 100 TET-qualified (in 2014) candidates from the streets outside the office of West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) in Salt Lake, where they were staging a sit-in since Monday seeking job appointment letters.
Opposition parties took to streets against the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal on Friday over the midnight police crackdown on Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) candidates protesting in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area over a bribe-for-job scam in the education department.
Late on Thursday, a huge contingent of Bidhannagar police removed more than 100 TET-qualified (in 2014) candidates from the streets outside the office of West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) in Salt Lake, where they were staging a sit-in since Monday seeking job appointment letters.
While the protesters allege that they were deprived of jobs despite appearing in the recruitment process in 2014, the primary board has maintained that the agitating candidates will have to go through the fresh recruitment process if they intend to get appointment letters. The board also moved the Calcutta high court on Wednesday, which ordered imposition of Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure at the protest site on Thursday.
Hours after the court order, the police contingent reached the protest site at Karunamoyee Crossing around 12.30am. As the protesters refused to vacate the area, they had to use force. Most of the candidates were dragged into police van and were briefly detained at various police stations in Salt Lake and later allowed to go. Three of the agitators were arrested and released on bail on Friday.
The incident drew flak from the opposition parties, who held several protest rallies throughout the day.
“The government unleashed terror on those who should be employed as school teachers. Will Mamata Banerjee give them the jobs they deserve? We want an answer,” said Bharatiya Janata Party’s state unit general secretary, Agnimitra Paul, who was arrested for leading a protest rally in the heart of Kolkata on Friday afternoon.
Twenty-six members of the youth and students’ front of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), were also detained by the police at Salt Lake for carrying out snap demonstrations.
“The TMC cannot stop the movement against corruption by using its police force. Our agitation will continue,” said Minakshi Mukherjee, Bengal president of the Democratic Youth Federation of India, the youth wing of the CPI(M). She was released from detention in the evening.
Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who led a protest near Gandhi’s statue in central Kolkata said: “The police could not have used such force without Banerjee’s consent. She planned the midnight operation.”
Countering criticisms that the BJP supported similar police action during the farmers’ stir outside Delhi last year, chief spokesperson of the party’s Bengal unit, Samik Bhattacharya, said perspectives of the two incidents are quite different.
“The farmers’ movement was not peaceful and it was against government policies (the farm laws) whereas here, the movement is against corruption inside the state government. The court did not ask the police to use force. Moreover, such action cannot be taken against women after sunset,” said Bhattacharya.
The ruling TMC, however, denied any police excess.
“The police simply removed the agitators. Agitations will not solve any problem. The state government is making all efforts to provide employment to deserving candidates,” said party’s state general secretary Kunal Ghosh.
One of the 2014 TET candidates, Achintya Samanta, who was arrested, alleged that he was kept inside a lockup with criminals. “This was a life-changing experience,” he said.
The teachers of Calcutta University, Jadavpur University and the West Bengal College Teachers’ Association also criticised the police action and corruption in the education department that is being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) under orders from the Calcutta high court. The Enforcement Directorate is carrying out a parallel probe.
“The mammoth scale of the corruption that has surfaced so far has no parallel in the entire country,” the Joint Platform of Academicians said in a statement.
Writers, poets and prominent members of the Bengali movie industry also voiced protest.
“The Trinamool govt is flouting the basic democratic rights of the hunger-strikers! Section 144 issued against a non-violent protest! Why? I strongly condemn the undemocratic and unethical action of the West Bengal govt!” tweeted actor and award-winning director Aparna Sen.
“The court ordered enforcement of Section 144 because the government asked for it,” she later told the media.
“I strongly condemn this crackdown by the police…..” tweeted film director Srijit Mukherji.
Taking a swipe at the Opposition, Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim said: “The BJP, Left and Congress have no presence of their own. So, they have formed a common platform against the TMC. This will not help them electorally.”
On Friday, the primary education board published a notification for employment of 11,765 school teachers. Those who passed the TET in 2014, 2016 and 2012 and are not above 40 years of age can apply, the notification said.
In May, Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered the CBI to probe the appointment of a few hundred non-teaching staff (Group C and D) and teaching staff by the West Bengal School Service Commission and West Bengal Board of Secondary Education. The appointees allegedly paid bribes in the range of ₹5-15 lakh to get jobs after failing selection tests.
The scam took place between 2014 and 2021 when TMC leader Partha Chatterjee was education minister.
The ED arrested Chatterjee and his close aide Arpita Mukherjee on July 23. Both are now in judicial custody along with several top former officials of the education department.
