West Bengal’s teaching and non-teaching staff who lost their jobs after a Supreme Court verdict have decided to go on a month-long series of protests demanding for their jobs back with dignity.
The Supreme Court had annulled the appointments of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff recruited through the 2016 School Service Commission (SSC) examinations, terming the entire selection process “vitiated and tainted”.
A group of 60 persons, under the banner of Joggo Shikshak Shikshika Adhikar Mancha, will leave for Delhi on Monday, The Indian Express has learnt.
Chinmoy Mondol, who is one of the affected teachers, said, “We will participate in a sit-in dharna at Jantar Mantar for a day on April 16. We will also try to seek time from the President of India.”
Aside from hunger strikes and relay hunger strikes, the delegation plans to distribute awareness leaflets in the states they pass through and ask for support.
Meanwhile, school staff who had lost their jobs are organising a ‘Raj Bhawan Abhijan’ on April 22 — a mega rally which will start from Sealdah and move towards the Y Channel in Dharmatala. According to Mondol, it is through the Governor that they would ask for the intervention of the President of India and other higher authorities.
“We have been inviting retired judges and legal experts to discuss the crisis and we are taking their opinions on the matter,” Mondol said.
Teachers and supportive government employees have also decided to wear badges reading “Qualified Teacher” from April 17 onwards. Campaigns and roadside conventions are being planned across the state
From May 1 to May 7, there will be a relay hunger strike, followed by an indefinite hunger strike from May 8 onwards.
On Sunday, three teachers who were on a hunger strike since April 10 ended it with coconut water. The teachers — Pankaj Roy, Suman Biswas and Pratap Kumar Saha — had said they were now planning a larger movement.
School staff who lost their jobs had recently organised a mega rally in West Bengal demanding that the mirror images of their OMR sheets be revealed and that separate lists of “tainted and untainted candidates” be published.
After an assurance of the same was made by the government on April 11, thousands of teachers who were conducting a sit-in demonstration outside the SSC office moved back to their protest site near Sahid Minar in the Esplanade area, stating that they did not want to cause any more hindrances to people. However, they say that they have vowed not to stop their protests till an official list of “untainted” job holders is published.