After hours of deliberation with the state education minister Bratya Basu and the school service commission chairman Siddhartha Mazumdar, the protesting teaching and non-teaching staff returned with the assurance that the administration was working towards segregating the “tainted” and “untainted” candidates.
“We went to the meeting with two main demands. Segregation of the list of candidates into tainted and untainted, and publish the mirror image of the OMR sheets,” said Sujay Sardar, a non-teaching staff member who lost his job after last week’s Supreme Court verdict. “They have assured us that the government is working on segregating the two and it will be published by April 21.”
Before the Calcutta high court and the Supreme Court the state government had earlier claimed it was not possible to segregate the two.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had claimed the state government was not given time to prepare the list.
On Friday, Basu and Mazumdar held a meeting with 13 representatives from the teaching and non-teaching staff who had applied for the posts in the 2016 state level selection test.
Last year a Calcutta high court division bench had scrapped the entire selection panel following a probe into jobs-for-cash scam.
It was upheld by the bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjeev Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar last week.
Minister Basu said the process should be completed within two weeks.
“The chief minister wanted legal protection for the deprived teachers who had qualified. They came to meet me with several demands. There is a Supreme Court directive, so we cannot proceed without taking legal shields. We are seeking legal counsel,” said Basu.
“The school service commission has the list of the tainted and untainted teachers which they received from the CBI. Thrice the SSC had submitted three affidavits before the court. We have no problems with releasing this list. SSC has no problems releasing this list provided there are no legal hassles. Within 10-15 days we should be able to publish it.”
The commission has already sought clarification from the apex court on the directive.
Basu said the government will file a review petition before the SC at the soonest.
Last Monday Mamata Banerjee had told the teachers to return to their schools. Basu said he too had made the sae request before the protesters who met him.
At Netaji Indoor, Banerjee assured: “No one will lose their jobs,” promising that the state government would first seek a clarification from the Supreme Court. “If the response is unfavorable, the government will ensure alternative arrangements for the eligible candidates within a specified timeframe.”
Minister Basu said he could not comment on whether these 25,753 appointees will continue to receive salaries as the matter was still pending before the apex court.