Bengal: Section of jobless teachers leave for Delhi to highlight their issue in national capital

NEW DELHI: A section of teachers rendered jobless by a recent Supreme Court verdict began their journey to Delhi on Monday to broaden their agitation beyond West Bengal. The teachers plan to hold a sit-in at Jantar Mantar on April 16. Mehboob Mondal, one of the spokespersons for the ‘Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum,’ said around 70 affected teachers — dismissed following the Supreme Court’s April 3 order scrapping 26,000 teaching and non-teaching jobs — left from Kolkata’s Esplanade area in two buses.

"Our protest is against the sacking of eligible teachers who had cleared the 2016 SSC recruitment test purely on merit. Despite this, we’ve been unfairly clubbed with those involved in corruption. The apex court declared the entire process vitiated. What are we supposed to do now?" Mondal told PTI. He added that the state’s offer to allow the terminated staff to work voluntarily has found few takers. "We want to present our side before the people in the national capital. Several prominent persons have expressed support and plan to visit us during the sit-in," he said.

Mondal confirmed that all those traveling to Delhi would participate in the three-hour protest at Jantar Mantar and said that necessary permissions from Delhi authorities had been obtained. Meanwhile, the ongoing sit-in by ‘eligible’ teachers at the Y-Channel near Esplanade in Kolkata will continue. The Supreme Court order on April 3 invalidated the appointments of 26,000 teaching and non-teaching staff in state-sponsored and aided schools after finding large-scale irregularities in the 2016 recruitment by the School Service Commission (SSC).

Teachers demand fair review

Protesters argue the SSC failed to distinguish between fraudulent and legitimate candidates, leading to the blanket cancellation of appointments. The agitating teachers have urged the state government and the SSC to devise a mechanism to reinstate deserving candidates. They have been staging protests across the state for several days.

The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) has filed a petition in the Supreme Court requesting that the dismissed staff be allowed to continue until the end of the academic year or until a new recruitment process is completed—whichever is earlier. Education Minister Bratya Basu, in the presence of WBBSE president Ramanuj Ganguly, had last week said the petition is expected to be heard by the apex court on April 17.