Hundreds of sacked schoolteachers and staff said on Monday they could not be faulted for the school service commission (SSC)’s inability to conduct all the counselling rounds within a year, before the expiry of the panel.
“Is it our fault that the panel expired by the time only three rounds were held? It was the SSC that conducted the remaining sessions,” said Debasish Patra, a sacked teacher from West Midnapore who was at the protest. Patra is differently-abled and walks with a stick.
“My wife is a homemaker. My father is over 70. Where will I go if I can’t get back to work?” he asked.
Television reports said the protesters prevented the delivery of food to the SSC office. Packed meals of rice and curries lay strewn on the road outside. “We are hungry. How can they have a feast?” asked a protester.
The protesters squatted on the road outside, after pushing the police back into the office.
Plastic sheets were laid on the road as the protesters prepared for a long haul. “Amra kara (Who are we?),” asked one voice. A hundred roared back: “Jogyo jara (The deserving)”.
Dhitish Mondal, another sacked teacher, asked: “Why should we bear the guilt burden of the SSC? My neighbours, the local shopkeeper, everyone talks about the teachers’ case. People are acting as if every one of us is corrupt. We need our respect back. We are ready to do anything for that.”
Almost every teacher said the SSC’s “sudden indecision” was “baffling” because education minister Bratya Basu had made no mention of any segregation on the basis of counselling rounds.
The SSC was supposed to publish on Monday a list segregating the tainted and those not specifically found tainted. But the list did not come out till late on Monday because the SSC ran into a legal hurdle.
The Supreme Court, which on April 3 scrapped en masse 25,753 teaching and non-teaching jobs, said the recruitments made after the expiry of the panel was one of the offences that had “vitiated” the entire process.
That led to the SSC’s purported plan to come out with a list of not specifically tainted candidates comprising only those who appeared in the first three counselling rounds.
The SSC had conducted 12 rounds of counselling in total to appoint teachers for Classes IX to XII and school staff following the 2016 state-level selection test. But the fourth counselling round happened after the expiry of the panel.
The protesters were not ready to accept the plan.
“I was recruited after the fourth round of counselling. How would I know that the panel had lost its validity? The onus is on the SSC,” said Shilpi Chakraborty, a protester. “They are trying to divide us based on the phases of counselling.”
Tempers were frayed as the night progressed. The slogans got louder and more aggressive. SSC chairman Siddhartha Majumdar was among those kept confined in the office.
The police used loud hailers, urging the protesters to stay calm. The cops, on their part, showed restraint that stood out especially when compared to April 11, when the force was accused of excesses on sacked school staff who marched to the Kasba office of the district inspector of schools. Videos showed a cop kicking a sacked teacher that day.