Unconvinced by chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s appeal to return to work, even if voluntarily, the sacked eligible teachers stayed away from schools across Bengal on Tuesday, with a section locking the offices of the district inspectors of schools in Midnapore town and Suri in Birbhum in protest.
Dissatisfied with Mamata’s verbal assurances in Calcutta on Monday, the invalidated teachers repeated their refusal to accept what they called an “underemployment” offer — a reference to Mamata Banerjee’s suggestion that they serve as civic police-like volunteers in schools.
Calling the proposal a “lollipop”, the teachers announced their resolve to continue their legal battle to reclaim their jobs and dignity.
Several hundred teachers from West Midnapore — who claimed to have been recruited based on “merit” but were later “invalidated” by the Supreme Court owing to a tainted recruitment process — took to the streets on Tuesday.
They marched in protest rallies, formed a human chain and condemned the large-scale corruption that, they alleged, had turned them into victims of injustice.
“We will be on the road until we get justice,” said a protesting teacher.
On April 3, a bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar, invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff recruited by the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) in 2016.
The court observed that since large-scale corruption had “vitiated” the entire recruitment process, it was impossible to segregate tainted candidates from those who may have been selected fairly based on merit.
On Monday, many teachers, claiming to be “untainted”, assembled at Midnapore College ground and later took out a protest rally that marched up to the office of the district magistrate.
There, they staged a demonstration at the Collectorate crossing, blocking the road for about half an hour. They categorically blamed Mamata for their plight and even burnt her effigy.
Around 12.30pm on Tuesday, the protesting teachers marched to the office of the district inspector of schools (education building) in Midnapore city and locked its main entrance, raising slogans against the idea of serving as “volunteer” or “civic” teachers.
Police later unlocked the entrance.
Sangeeta Saha, a teacher from Shri Krishnapur High School in Kharagpur, said: “On one hand, the Supreme Court’s order, and on the other hand, the Chief Minister’s verbal promise. Which one will we accept?”
“Don’t set our lives on fire with verbal offers which have little meaning. We want to return to school with respect. But not as volunteer teachers or civic teachers as she said. Please don’t play with the lives of so many teachers, else there will be fire everywhere,” Saha added.
On Tuesday, BJP leaders, led by one of the party’s state general secretaries, Jagannath Chattopadhyay, locked the office of the district inspector of schools in Suri, Birbhum district.
They demanded that the office remain closed until the government guarantees jobs for teachers who were not involved in any recruitment scams. “We locked the DI office in protest against the recruitment scam,” Chattopadhyay said.
A protesting teacher expressed her distress, saying that the situation had not only cost her a job but also damaged her social dignity as a teacher.
Across the state, the mood among the invalidated but self-claimed untainted teachers remained largely the same, as most of them stayed away from schools, either preferring to wait and watch or hitting the streets.
In what appeared to be among the few exceptions, two invalidated teachers — Paban Chandra Soren and Amar Biswas, attached to Anjangar High School in Badkulla, Nadia — resumed their duties on Tuesday.
“I will wait till the entire development comes to an end, no matter whatever the problem I might suffer during the period,” Soren said.