Police could have been more sensitive and careful: Speaker
The Statesman | 19 May 2025
At a time when the senior cops on Friday justified the use of force to rescue government employees trapped inside the Bikash Bhawan, Biman Bandyopadhyay, speaker, West Bengal Legislative Assembly on Saturday said police could have been more sensitive and careful before taking such action on the agitators.
The jobless school teachers and non-teaching group C and D staff said many of their colleagues were brutally assaulted and injured after huge police force resorted to lathi charge on them indiscriminately on Thursday night in front of the Bikash Bhawan.
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The primary intention of the jobless protesters was to prevent the state government from notifying a fresh recruitment process for the posts vacated by the court order, which had sacked 25,753 school staff saying their entire recruitment process was vitiated.
Mr Bandyopadhyay while speaking to reporters today said: “Police could have been a little more sensitive and careful before taking action against them.”
“But I don’t support the agitating teachers for forcefully entering into the Bikash Bhawan by breaking the lock and gate of the education department headquarters. I strongly protest against their move. It’s not desirable from them when the chief minister herself is looking into their issues with sympathy and solidarity,” the speaker said.
Slamming the protesters Firhad Hakim, Mr Bandyopadhyay’s party colleague and a heavyweight minister in the Trinamul Congress cabinet, today said that they are staging drama in front of the Bikash Bhawan in the name of protest. They are interested in showing their faces in TV news channels, said Mr Hakim.
Police have started a case against unknown persons for damaging public property and assaulting government officials at Bikash Bhawan on Thursday.
More than 3,000 government employees from the 58 offices across the 10 floors of the office space and several visitors had become hostage to the siege well past working hours on Thursday, according to police.
The police said some elderly employees had felt unwell and at least one pregnant woman complained of uneasiness after being holed up inside for several hours.
“We started receiving calls from the people stuck inside. A young woman tried to jump from the mezzanine floor and fractured her leg. This was the situation when we had to intervene to rescue the people inside,” said a senior police official. Justifying the police action, he said: “Everyone has the right to agitation. (But) the right to agitation should not in any way supersede the right to freedom of movement.”