Mayor Firhad Hakim disapproved of the protests by the sacked teachers and non-teaching staff at Bikash Bhawan on Thursday night.

“The way they are protesting is not right. They did not allow the employees at Bikash Bhawan to leave till late. It is not just the education department, other departments too function from there,” Hakim said at Friday’s Talk to Mayor session.

A protest by the teachers and non-teaching staff, sacked by the Supreme Court in the cash-for-jobs scam, had turned into a siege from Thursday afternoon till late into the night, after which the cops resorted to lathicharge to disperse the squatting protesters.

Bikash Bhawan’s gate was locked, and the passage blocked by squatters, who demand they be reinstated till the end of their employment and refuse to sit for another round of exams and interviews as directed by the apex court.

“Employees of Bikash Bhawan are also human beings. If they cannot go home to their families or buy medicines to take to their ailing parents, is that humanity? There are those inside who are suffering the consequences of protests that have nothing to do with them.”

Earlier in the day, two top state cops, the ADG (law and order) Jawed Shamim and ADG (South Bengal) Supratim Sarkar had offered a similar line of defence to justify the police action which the protesters claimed left some of them with broken limbs and cracked heads.

The cash-for-jobs scam and the scrapping of 25,753 posts of teaching and non-teaching staff who had appeared in the 2016 state level selection test had come as a major embarrassment for the Trinamool government.

The then state education minister and Behala (East) MLA Partha Chatterjee is one of the prime accused in the case. Several other Trinamool MLAs and functionaries of the School Service Commission and the state education board were arrested in connection with the scam.

Hakim said the protests have left the Karunamoyee bus stand route out of bounds for the commuters.

“We cannot use the Karunamoyee bus stand route anymore. Instead we have to go all the way round the stadium and pass through lanes, which is an inconvenience,” said Hakim, also the state minister for municipal affairs and urban development. “I understand the situation of those protesting but they aren’t doing the right thing by blocking the entire stretch of road for days on end. They are causing massive problems to the residents of that neighbourhood.”