Two days after chief minister Mamata Banerjee assured the teaching and non-teaching staff they won’t suffer job loss, cops rained lathis on the protesters who had assembled at the district inspector of schools office in Kasba.

Picture: Soumyajit Dey

Similar police action on the protesters was also seen in the district towns of Tamluk in East Midnapore, Midnapore Town in West Midnapore, Balurghat in South Dinajpur, and other places.

Picture: Soumyajit Dey

“They have every right to protest. Their jobs were snatched from them. Mamata Banerjee and her party leaders are responsible for this. They should gherao the state secretariat,” BJP leader Dilip Ghosh said.

Cops in uniform and plainclothes chased away the young men and women from the compound of the DI’s office. Most of them have been fighting for their survival since the Supreme Court upheld a Calcutta high court verdict that had pronounced the selection process of these schoolteachers and non-teaching staff in government-run and government-aided schools as “tainted.”

Picture: Soumyajit Dey

Two of the injured protesters were reportedly hospitalised.

“What is our fault? We came here to demand our jobs back. Why did the cops assault us?” asked a former teacher.

“They can shoot us dead. What is the point of beating us with lathis? Our lives have been already been finished,” said another protester.

Speaking on Monday, Mamata had told the job-losers that they had not been terminated by the government and they could continue with their jobs, while the government seeks clarification from the Supreme Court.

“Could this have happened without the chief minister’s knowledge?” asked another female teacher.

Picture: Soumyajit Dey

In Midnapore, the DI’s office was locked by the protesters. Wednesday morning the scene was re-enacted. A protest rally with an effigy of the school service commission that was on the way to the DI’s office was stopped by the cops. In Tamluk, the DI’s office was locked by the protesters this morning.

Picture: Soumyajit Dey

The cops and the protesters also clashed at Balurghat while the job-seekers were on the way to the DI’s office. An altercation ensued between the two groups.

This afternoon, BJP’s Tamluk MP and former Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Ganguly, who had ordered a CBI probe into the cash-for-jobs scam, will meet the state education minister Bratya Basu and other officials of the education department to work out a solution.

Picture: Soumyajit Dey

The leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi wrote to President Droupadi Murmu requesting the “untainted” teachers be allowed to continue with their jobs. In the multiple hearings held at the Calcutta high court and the Supreme Court the Bengal government did not provide a list of jobseekers who allegedly used unfair means to secure their positions. The state government had created 6,861 supernumerary posts to accommodate the “excess” candidates.