Teachers and non-teaching staff left jobless by a Supreme Court verdict tore through guardrail cordons and broke open iron gates to lay siege to the state education department’s headquarters in Salt Lake on Thursday.
They kept hundreds of Bikash Bhavan employees confined for more than eight hours until police began using force from 8pm to disperse the protesters.
Many protesters were seen bleeding and complaining the police had struck them with batons. But officers said the police had shown remarkable “restraint” since morning and were attacked first, “with bricks”.
A distraught cop after being attacked by protesters
While some of the hostages were evacuated in batches, many remained trapped inside the building as the protesters kept returning.
Around 10.30pm, the protesters announced a mass convention at 3pm in front of Bikash Bhavan on Friday. Some of the agitators were still inside the compound. The police deployment continued.
The protesters’ primary intent was to prevent the Bengal 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.
The protest choked traffic in one of Calcutta’s busiest office corridors.
The hundreds of men and women who stood for hours outside Bikash Bhavan’s
gates under a scorching sun demanded chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s intervention.
Sources in the school education department said the government was obliged to honour the court’s order to notify the fresh recruitment process by May 31 and complete the process by December 31.
However, the Bengal government has sought a review of the sackings, underscoring how 18,000-plus candidates who were “not specifically found tainted” had been made to suffer “for the alleged illegality committed by the SSC (school service commission) in the selection process in respect of certain other tainted candidates”.
The petition was submitted last week, and the SSC has filed a separate review plea. The petitions are yet to be heard. But the agitating teachers were unwilling to wait till the court had decided the review petitions.
“We can’t live with this uncertainty. We have been assured salary till December but we don’t know what will happen after that,” one of them said.
The state government has allowed those “not specifically found tainted” among the sacked teachers to resume teaching against a monthly pay till December. If they want to continue beyond that, they must clear the fresh recruitment exam.
Mehboob Mandal, a spokesperson for the protesters, said they would not allow the government to issue the notification.
“We will not sit for any fresh exam since we have already cleared one,” he said.
As the crowd broke through the police cordons and the main gate to barge into the compound, the police made a futile effort to push them using cane shields.
The protesters gave Mamata time till 3pm to intervene. When there was no response, they locked all the gates.
Chinmoy Mandal, a protesting teacher, said: “The deadline is over. We will not allow the employees (inside Bikash Bhavan) to come out. We have locked all the gates.”
Mandal later fell ill and was taken to hospital.
A scuffle broke out inside the compound when the chairperson of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, Sabyasachi Dutta, arrived with some others and tried to talk to the protesters.
Dutta was greeted with “go back” slogans and was called “chor (thief)” by some in the crowd.
A state education department official told this newspaper that the government had no option but to wait for legal recourse.
“We have submitted a review petition and mentioned the 18,000-odd teachers who are getting victimised. We now have no option but to wait for the hearing,” he said.
Senior police officers, including Bidhannagar police commissioner Mukesh and deputy commissioner Aneesh Sarkar, arrived and requested the mob over loudhailers to stay calm and not take the law into their own hands.
Later in the evening, senior officers began a dialogue with the agitating teachers but they refused to leave. Eventually, a huge police contingent started pushing the protesters back and escorting the employees out of the building after 8pm, with limited success.
A senior officer from the Bidhannagar police commissionerate said the force had tried to pacify the protesters and repeatedly requested them to release the hostages.
“They hurled bricks at us. Several of our men and women have been injured. Some of the protesters have also been injured,” the officer said.
Aniket Mahata, a doctor who was among the leaders of the protests that had followed the rape and murder of a junior doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital last year, arrived at the scene to show solidarity with the protesters.