Thursday, 11 September 2025
Thursday, 11 September 2025
Waiting for teaching jobs in state-run schools for nearly three years, qualified candidates for classes I-V from the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) of 2022 hit the streets on Thursday afternoon with a march till the state Assembly.
The one question they had was when will they receive their appointment letters.
Squatting on the road separating the Assembly and the Eden Gardens stadium, the protesters were met with force as the Kolkata Police personnel dragged them on the road in the afternoon heat.
“For three years we have been waiting for our appointments. There were no allegations made against the recruitment process. We remain unemployed. Why?” asked a candidate.
The TET was held on December 11, 2022 with around 6.19 lakh candidates taking the tests. Around 1.5 lakh of them had qualified after the results were declared in the February of 2023.
But the appointment letters were never sent.
“Our only demand is that interviews be conducted immediately to complete the recruitment process,” said a protestor.
“The chief minister had promised that no TET-qualified candidate will remain unemployed. She should keep her promise,” said another waiting candidate.
For several months now, especially after 25,753 teachers involved in teaching students of classes IX-XII were declared invalid in the cash-for-jobs scam, Mamata Banerjee has been talking about how the court cases have hampered the recruitment process.
A day ago at a government event in Jalpaiguri, Mamata complained that frequent public interest litigations on recruitment, especially of teachers, has thwarted her plans for generating employment.
The protestors gathered at the Metro Green Line station in Esplanade where they held a demonstration and then went on a march towards the state Assembly, which is not in session.
At the main gate of the Assembly, the protesters halted and started raising slogans.
They demanded that the 50,000 teaching posts lying vacant in the primary sections be filled up immediately.
They refused to vacate the entrance of the Assembly till their demands were heard.
There was a heavy police bandobast at the Assembly gate and the Kolkata Police personnel dragged and lifted some of them to a waiting prison van.
Last month, a protest outside the premises of Bikash Bhawan, the state education department headquarters, had met with a similar crackdown from the men and women in uniform.
