BJP MP urges disqualified teachers to intensify protest
The Statesman | 9 April 2025
BJP MP and former judge ofp on Tuesday advised the aggrieved teachers, group C and D candidates, whose appointments have been cancelled by the Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday, to intensify their protests against the Mamata Banerjee government otherwise their career would be doomed.
Justice Gangopadhyay also asked them to hit the road by organising sit-in-demonstrations and hunger strike till the state government arranges some way out.
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Several invalidated candidates met the BJP MP from Tamluk in East Midnapore today requesting his advice on the fiasco.
He said that the state education minister Bratya Basu and Siddhartha Majumder, chairman of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) should revolt against the chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is virtually controlling everything in the administration.
The WBSSC had conducted the recruitment tests in 2016 for the posts of assistant teachers and group C and D employees in state government-aided schools across West Bengal.
“Earlier, I had said about the formation of a committee going beyond politics to find out candidates who are qualified and who are not. But the chief minister alone can’t form the committee because she would include her partymen in it as members,” Justice Gangopadhyay said.
Justice Gangopadhyay on Friday had proposed that a committee be set up to look into the fallout of the Supreme Court upholding the cancellation of more than 25,000 teaching and non-teaching jobs in the state.
“Didi should constitute a committee…I believe that, even today, eligible and ineligible candidates can be segregated. I am not blaming anyone today,” he had said earlier, adding that the committee should include the education minister, the advocate general, and Justice Gangopadhyay himself.
The apex court on Thursday had upheld the dismissal of the teaching and non-teaching staff recruited to government-aided schools in the city and districts, citing manipulation and a cover-up, landing the Trinamul Congress government in a huge embarrassment one year ahead of Assembly polls scheduled in 2026 in the state.
Justice Gangopadhyay along with several deprived teachers went to WBSSC office at Salt Lake around 4 p.m. but couldn’t meet Mr Majumder because the latter was not there in the office.
Justice Gangopadhyay said he would come to the commission again on Wednesday to get details of OMR sheets that can differentiate qualified and non-qualified candidates.
He told reporters: “It won’t be possible to differentiate between qualified and non-qualified candidates if the commission destroyed OMR sheets.”
Coming down heavily on the former HC judge, Mr Basu said: “He used to act like a politician when he was a judge but now it’s completely reversed.”