After being locked inside the Acharya Sadan West Bengal School Commission office for nearly 40 hours on Wednesday, the SSC Chairman Siddharta Majumdar was allowed to leave the building at around 9 pm.
However, teachers say their protest will continue. On April 3, the Supreme Court invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and staffers at state-run and aided schools, calling the entire selection process “vitiated and tainted”.
The Chairman was taken to his residence with a police escort and he refused to say anything to the media.
The protesting teachers said, “We will discuss the list with the Education Minister. However, today, there is a hearing of our case in Calcutta High Court. The Chairman is supposed to be present there in person. So we released him from the siege.”
They told mediapersons, “Our demand was to publish the list of tainted and untainted candidates, the Education Minister said that it is not happening now. Therefore, we will have to speak to him regarding the matter.”
From Monday the jobless teachers had been protesting outside the SSC office demanding for the list of “tainted” and “untainted” candidates to be published. During the protest, 16 staff members, including the Chairman, had been locked inside the SSC office.
Two rounds of talks had taken place on Monday and Tuesday with the protesting teachers, but there was no solution.
Arpita Sengupta, a protesting teacher, said, “We do not want our petition to suffer, so we allowed the Chairman to go, but our protest will continue.”
Sanchita Chandra told The Indian Express, “We are sitting in the scorching weather to get our jobs back. We are genuine candidates but are suffering for others’ mistakes.”
“I have left my granddaughter at home and I am here to support my daughter and the others who are protesting for their rights. Our families depend on these jobs, my daughter had studied so hard for this exam and then got the job, this is what she deserves,” said Shikha Das, mother of protesting teacher Dipika Das.
Bengal Education Minister Bratya Basu on Tuesday said that the state will not publish a list of “tainted” and “untainted” candidates of the 2016 recruitment process by the SSC, as their “legal counsel has stated it may lead to contempt of court”. The list has been a key demand for protesting teachers and non-teaching staff who lost their jobs after a recent Supreme Court order, many of whom have been on a sit-in protest since Monday afternoon.