Day after Kasba cop kick, jobless teachers lay siege near SSC office
Times of India | 11 April 2025
12 Kolkata: The "kickgate" episode ignited strong emotions with jobless teachers launching a two-pronged protest on Thursday. While one group camped outside the SSC office in Salt Lake on a relay hunger strike, another group took out a mass rally from Sealdah to Esplanade.
Outside the SSC office, over 50 protestors set up camp. Many stayed overnight and commenced a relay hunger strike from early morning. Their primary demand was the immediate identification of tainted and untainted candidates and public access to the mirror images of all OMR sheets used during the recruitment process.
Suman Biswas, one of the teachers leading the hunger strike, stressed the urgency of the demand. "As long as the segregation is not done and the mirror images of the OMR sheets of all candidates are not made public, we will continue our hunger strike," he said. "If the govt is serious about protecting untainted candidates, they must act now."
Support for the protesting teachers grew throughout the day as prominent BJP leaders, including former HC judge and Lok Sabha MP Abhijit Gangopadhyay and actor-politicians Rupa Ganguly and Rudranil Ghosh visited the protest site to express solidarity.
Meanwhile, nearly 500 dismissed teachers and non-teaching staff organised a rally denouncing the "police brutality" against jobless educators. Many of them lost their jobs following a Supreme Court verdict that invalidated their appointments due to irregularities.
Moumita Sarkar, a physical science teacher from Nadia, said: "We are surprised at their brutal attack on protesting teachers. How can we trust any verbal assurance when our jobs were terminated by the apex court? We want the govt to present solid evidence in court, including the OMR sheets."
Later in the afternoon, a larger group — of around 750 individuals, including teachers, civil society members, and CPM supporters — marched from Sealdah, weaving their way through College Street and BB Ganguly Street after being forced to keep away from SN Banerjee Road where another demonstration was on. The march culminated in a sit-in protest at Dorina Crossing in Esplanade.
Among these protestors was Pratima Roy, a Sanskrit teacher from Alipurduar, who joined the rally with her two-year-old son in her arms. "The CM's speech at Netaji Indoor Stadium was vague," she said. "We refuse to be volunteers. We demand our jobs back. Even my husband, who is a police officer, was shocked by how we were treated at the Kasba DI office."
Swapan Kumar Mondal, a former mathematics teacher from Lakshikantapur Malaya High School, displayed his wounds sustained during Wednesday's scuffle at the Kasba DI office.
"I barely escaped being hit by police batons," he said. "This kind of treatment was unimaginable. We are victims of the SSC's incompetence and the govt's negligence. Protest is now our only option."