Meeting ‘partially successful’, say sacked teachers after deliberation with SSC chief

KOLKATA: Teachers who have been rendered jobless following a Supreme Court verdict and on an indefinite sit-in before the West Bengal School Service Commission headquarters, on Tuesday held a meeting with SSC Chairman Siddhartha Majumdar and described it as “partially satisfactory”. They, however, vowed to continue the agitation till they are officially reinstated as teachers on a permanent basis.

"We are partially satisfied with the list of 17,206 teachers of whom 15,403 are eligible as confirmed by SSC," spokesperson of the Deserving Teachers Forum Chinmoy Mondal told reporters after the meeting. But there is no explanation why the mirror images of Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) were still not posted on the SSC website as promised.

"Tomorrow we will seek clarification from West Bengal Board of Secondary Education on why those tainted among the 17,206 are not being sacked. We will seek clarification from the minister as to why mirror images of OMR are still not out. Till our interests are protected we will neither go back from the road nor lift the gherao of the SSC Chairman," he said.

Another member of the delegation told PTI: "We can say the outcome of the talks was partially fruitful but many other issues remain to be addressed." As Mondal went back to the teachers who were on a sit-in and informed them about the outcome of the meeting, several of them like Subrata Biswas said the forum should not trust the government and not give in to their “divisive and diversionary” tactics.

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Asked if he would ask the protestors to lift the siege and allow the SSC to continue with its normal work, Majumdar said, "The appeal is always there". Members of various civil society organizations and rights groups, the Left organisations, Abhaya Mancha set up in memory of the R G Kar hospital rape and murder victim and West Bengal Junior Doctors Front went to the spot to express solidarity with the protesting teachers."

"Altogether 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff of state-run and -aided schools lost their jobs after the Supreme Court found large-scale irregularities in the 2016 recruitment process and scrapped the entire panel on April 3. The Supreme Court on April 17 extended till December 31 the services of terminated teachers found untainted by the CBI," Majumdar also said.

"Speaking to reporters in the afternoon, the education minister informed that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, in its April 17 appeal before the Supreme Court to modify its April 3 order, had submitted by means of an affidavit that 17,502 recruited teachers and non-teaching staff from the 2016 panel have “not been specified as tainted," he added.