Teachers’ protest shifts to new site at Sahid Minar
The Statesman | 26 April 2025
Protesting teachers of the government-aided schools across the state on Friday decided to shift their new site of protest at Sahid Minar and stopped their five day-long siege to Acharya Sadan, head office of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) at Salt Lake since 21 April.
Today, they decided to withdraw their agitation for a temporary period to return to their schools after the state school education department sent lists of 15,403 ‘untainted’ teachers to the respective offices of district inspectors (DI) of schools in the state.
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They had besieged the WBSSC chairman Siddhartha Majumder and other officials at Acharya Sadan for two days since Tuesday demanding the commission to release a list of ‘tainted’ and ‘untainted’ teachers along with OMR sheets in the official website of the commission.
On Wednesday, they allowed the chairman and his colleagues to leave the Acharya Sadan after 40 hours.
Today, one of the members of the Deserving Teachers’ Forum, said: “We have withdrawn the sit-in programme before the commission office and our protest will continue at Sahid Minar till the commission makes the list of both ‘tainted’ and ‘untainted’ teachers public.”
He also said that the forum plans to file a review petition in the Supreme Court (SC) regarding its judgment invalidating jobs of 25,752 assistant teachers, non-teaching group C and D employees recruited through the WBSSC-conducted test in 2016.
“Sitting here the whole day in the open will make it difficult for us to prepare the review petition by consulting lawyers,” he said.
Another teacher said that though a list has been released, albeit incomplete, it is prudent for teachers whose names have appeared in the list to return to schools from now. We will intensify our agitation during summer vacation to press for our remaining demands, including reinstatement till the age of 60 and release of a complete list of eligible and ineligible candidates.
He said that they would continue their protest in coming days till the WBSSC includes the names of ‘untainted’ candidates whose names have not yet appeared in the list of 15,403 eligible teachers that has been sent to the DIs.
Candidates claiming themselves as ‘untainted’ have given 48 hours time to the commission to include their names in the list. They will again organise sit-in before the commission office if it does not solve the problem within the deadline, they said.
“The commission has partially met our demands but there several other mistakes done by it while preparing the list of ‘untainted’ candidates. We had demanded the commission to release a list of eligible candidates but that has not been done sincerely. We have urged it to prepare the final list correcting all mistakes,” said Mehboob Mondal, one of the agitating teachers.
A section of jobless teachers, who still stick to their decision to continue protest, have urged the commission to release the list of the ‘tainted’ as well as ineligible candidates to make it clear that they can’t go to their respective schools. They can’t also get salaries as per the apex court directive.
The state education department has sent lists of 15,403 ‘untainted’ teachers who can go to their respective schools and get salaries till 31 December to the offices of district inspectors (DI) of schools across the state.
Jobless teachers and headmasters and headmistresses of many schools felt that the list of 15,403 eligible teachers sent to the DI offices has created sheer confusion among themselves.