Thousands of candidates from outside Bengal took the State Level Selection Test (SLST) for assistant teacher posts for Classes 11 and 12 conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) across 478 centres in the state on Sunday.
Talking about this trend, State Education Minister Bratya Basu said at a press conference, “I think there is no job or employment in other states, so they are coming here. Statistics say there is no job in states with double-engine governments. Bengal has always accepted all, and we have never discriminated against anyone… No idea why in BJP-ruled states, Bengalis are being attacked. But why should we do the same to those who are coming here from there?”
At Maharaja Manindra Chandra College in north Kolkata, several such candidates were seen waiting on the streets for the gates of the college to open. The group told The Indian Express that they reached Kolkata at 4 am and immediately headed out for the exam centre.
Sunil Kumar Yadav from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh (UP), said, “There is a dearth of jobs in UP, so I am applying in other states like Bihar, Rajasthan, and Bengal.”
Prabha Yadav from Ara, Bihar, said, “This is the first time I applied outside my state. Since there are vacancies here, I applied.”
Ramesh Jha from Kanpur, UP, who took the Chemistry paper, told reporters, “We can apply all over the country. So, I apply everywhere. In UP, the recruitment process for government jobs takes a lot of time. So, I applied here. Why miss out on the opportunity?”
Rajiv Kumar Yadav from Patmunda, UP, who arrived in Kolkata on the Purvanchal Express, said, “I have also appeared in exams in Bihar and Haryana.”
Asked why she applied for assistant teacher jobs in Bengal, Yogita Sharma from Ballia, UP, said, “Jobs are there in UP also, but we can apply for recruitment examinations all over the country… In Bengal, the number of vacancies this time is huge. So, I applied.”
The recruitment drive is to fill 35,726 assistant teacher posts in state-aided and sponsored schools.
In April, the Supreme Court upheld the Calcutta High Court order scrapping the employment of around 26,000 teachers who were recruited through the WBSSC SLST exam held in 2016. The appointments were cancelled owing to a flawed selection method and large-scale corruption in the recruitment process.
Nearly 2,50,000 candidates were to take the exam in the state on Sunday.
According to WBSSC, a total of 13,517 candidates from other states, primarily UP and Bihar, took the examination on Sunday.
On September 7, around 31,000 candidates from other states had appeared for the SLST for assistant teacher posts for Classes 9 and 10.