Chief minister Mamata Banerjee said on Monday that pregnant women cannot be held hostage and roads cannot be blocked in the name of protests.
“I am not against any movement, but the movement must have a Lakshman Rekha,” she said.
Mamata was speaking to reporters four days after sacked and aggrieved school staff laid siege to the education secretariat, Bikash Bhavan, confining over 3,000 government employees for over eight hours, many of them women, some of them pregnant. The deadlock forced police to intervene so those trapped could be evacuated.
“I don’t have anything to say against those who are protesting. What I am opposed to is that you cannot confine anyone by force, you cannot harm people’s interests by blocking the road. This protest has more outsiders than teachers. There were allegations that those who were pregnant were not allowed to leave. They had been detained. Those who went to office were detained for hours,” the chief minister told reporters at the Calcutta airport before leaving for north Bengal.
Mamata said: “A girl who was repeatedly telling the protesters to let her go was prevented from leaving. Out of desperation, she jumped (the contractual Group D employee jumped off the first floor of Bikash Bhavan), suffering injuries to her legs. We have to remember that we are human. There is nothing greater than humanity. I am not against any movement, but the movement must have a Lakshman Rekha (boundary). I don’t have any right to obstruct others, and they too don’t have a right to obstruct me.”
The tussle between the state government and the school staff, whose services were terminated by the Supreme Court on April 3, has broken out at a time when the government and the school service commission (SSC) have filed petitions in the apex court seeking a review of the order.
The petitions are likely to be heard by the end of May, sources in the education department said.
Mamata said: “Instead of doing this (staging protests), fight the legal battle. We will extend all support. We are fighting the legal battle to the best of our ability. But if any political party thinks they can muddy the waters, I would ask, was it proper of them to file a case (against the recruitments)?”
The chief minister has been critical of lawyer and CPM Rajya Sabha MP Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya for filing a slew of cases against alleged irregularities in the recruitment of school staff, which culminated in the Supreme Court upholding an order by Calcutta High Court last year terminating the jobs of 25,753 of teaching and non-teaching employees, saying the entire recruitment process was “vitiated”.
Mamata said while she was “sympathetic” to the teachers staging protests, she has to abide by what the Supreme Court says while hearing the fresh petitions.
“I told them when I met them (at the Netaji Indoor Stadium on April 7) that the state government will file a review petition. In legal matters, you have to abide by what the court says. There is a compulsion. Everybody has to realise that. If the court allows the review petition, then well and good. Our lawyers will fight to protect their jobs. But if the court decides otherwise, I cannot say that I will disregard the order because we are bound to accept what the court says,” she said.
“We have not stopped anyone’s salary. The state government is providing an allowance to Group C and D employees whose salaries have been stopped following the Supreme Court’s order.”
The SSC is going ahead with its preparations to publish a recruitment notification for the appointment of teachers and non-teaching staff in secondary and higher secondary schools by May 29, in compliance with what he apex court had ordered on April 17 while modifying its April 3 order.
A senior education department official said as the apex court had set the school education department and the SSC a deadline of May 31 to submit an affidavit on the fresh hiring exercise, the notification has to be issued by May 29.
“If the Supreme Court strikes down the petition by the state government and the SSC, then the fresh recruitment process has to be held by December 31,” the official said.
Trinamool Congress national general secretary
Abhishek Banerjee said on Monday that the teachers cannot resort to violence in the name of protests.
“In a democratic country, everybody has the right to protest democratically. However, the protesters must see that the protests do not turn violent. I saw some videos that showed that gates are being broken. When a protest turns violent, it loses its essence,” he said.