Civil society rallies against police action on TET candidates

KOLKATA: Members of the civil society took out a rally in the city on Saturday to protest against the police action on Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) candidates in the intervening night of October 20 and 21.

The rally, which covered a distance of more than one km, was supported by the opposition CPI(M). Educationist Pabitra Sarkar, actor Badshah Moitra, poet Mandakranta Sen, and actor Debdut Ghosh were among the Left-leaning intellectuals who walked in the rally which ended in downtown Esplanade area after moving through Central Avenue. They were accompanied by CPI(M) leaders like Biman Bose.

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Bose told reporters, "This is an apolitical rally against the corruption and terror unleashed by TMC. We are here to extend support to the cause". Sarkar said, "Qualified, eligible teaching job aspirants were beaten up and bundled into police vans for demanding justice. This is not done." Around 500 protesting TET 2014 candidates were bundled in waiting police vehicles by the police personnel on that night, 84 hours after they launched an indefinite sit-in near the head office of West Bengal Board of Primary Education at Salt Lake here demanding immediate recruitment in primary schools as teachers without interviews and tests.

The protestors, aspirants of primary teachers' posts in state-run and aided schools, claimed to have cleared the TET but their names did not feature in the merit list. The police crackdown triggered an outrage as several opposition parties and their youth wing held protests in the city the next day expressing solidarity with the TET 2014 protestors. Prominent intellectuals including filmmakers Aparna Sen and Srijit Mukherjee and theater personality Kaushik Sen had earlier voiced their outrage over the police action.