The state secondary education board has show-caused at least a dozen schoolteachers for attempting to storm Bikash Bhavan, the education secretariat, on May 15 and “wrongfully confining” members of the staff and visitors for several hours.
The board said in the notice that it had received a tip-off from the school education department about some of the teachers in the group that stormed the premises and locked up its gates to prevent those inside from stepping out.
The notice, sent to individual teachers, says they acted “unlawfully and dismantled the campus gates, causing damage to public property”.
Concerned teachers were identified based on photographs and videos from Bikash Bhavan, which houses the education department and many other offices, said a board official.
According to the notice, the teachers “locked the gates of all the egress points of the building” and wrongfully confined those inside “for a prolonged period from 11.30am, thereby causing disruption to public services and hindering the functioning of all public offices housed in the premises”.
The showcause notice was issued days after Bidhannagar police summoned 15 teachers who were allegedly caught on camera, instigating or causing violence on the Bikash Bhavan compound and detaining people inside the building.
The notice, signed by the board’s deputy secretary, says people who had come for various public services faced “extreme hardship due to wrongful confinement”.
The notice says, when the officials and the visitors were leaving the office premises following police intervention, “they were physically manhandled and verbally abused, causing extreme trauma”.
The notice directs them to show cause for “such unlawful activities, which are in violation of the code of conduct and discipline of teaching and non-teaching staff of educational institutions as per applicable rules” and asks them to say within seven days “why no action will be taken against you”.
Mehboob Mandal, who was among the protesting teachers and who is also a spokesperson for the Deserving Teachers Rights Forum, which was leading the protests on May 15, said: “Some of the teachers have received the notice. They will respond accordingly.”
Board president Ramanuj Ganguly declined to comment.
An education department official said: “After staging a disruptive sit-in since May 7, it was only on May 20 that they wrote to education minister Bratya Basu seeking a dialogue to end the impasse. Could they not have done the same earlier? Why did they have to storm Bikash Bhavan?”
The teachers wrote to the education minister a day after Mamata told them not to cross the Lakshman Rekha in the name of protests.