West Bengal: Jobless teachers stage protest, SSC chief says commission will try to help deserving ones

KOLKATA: Around 1,000 young teachers, who were rendered jobless following a recent ruling by the Calcutta High Court, staged a demonstration outside the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) office here on Friday to express their grievances. The teachers said they were part of the 26,000 candidates who appeared for the SSC 2016 test, a recruitment process deemed null and void by the high court in its recent verdict.

Police personnel from the RAF and Bidhannagar police commissionerate intervened, halting the demonstrators near the commission's head office at Karunamoyee. Approximately, 100 protesters were briefly detained for obstructing the road, a police official said. SSC chairman Siddhartha Majumder told PTI that he met about 10 representatives from the protesters, explaining the legal constraints faced by the commission. He expressed sympathy towards deserving candidates and assured them that the commission would do whatever possible within the legal framework to assist them. "I have told them we are sympathetic to the deserving candidates. The commission will certainly do whatever is possible, as per the legal framework, to help them," he said.

However, he highlighted that the commission's actions were restricted as the matter was now sub-judice. Responding to queries regarding demands for the release of answer sheets in the public domain, Majumder clarified that the commission couldn't even disclose candidates' results, as the entire issue was sub-judice. The SSC had earlier said while results of around 20,000 candidates were not suspicious, there are anomalies in the results of over 5000 and it had been brought to the notice of the court in past submissions.

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