A 35-year-old man from Debra, one of the 25,753 school teachers, who lost their jobs following a Supreme Court order in Bengal’s cash-for-jobs scam in the state’s schools, died on the morning of India’s 78th Independence Day.
By Friday afternoon, the late Subal Soren’s comrades had assembled outside the gate of the private hospital where the former teacher was being treated since he suffered a stroke last Tuesday.
The hospital at Debra had referred him to Kolkata and he was brought to a private hospital in the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass.
The agitating former teachers, who have been on the streets since the Calcutta High Court last year and the Supreme Court on April 3 declared the appointments of assistant teachers and staff in Group-C and D sections invalid, rushed to the hospital.
In the afternoon, they alleged the cops had tried to take away Soren’s corpse in an ambulance. The former school teachers blocked the passageway to stop the ambulance.
By 4 pm, the EM Bypass was teeming with the protesters who blocked the road.
“We have seen the cops do the same thing last year after the rape and murder of a doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. They tried to do the same today,” said a protesting former teacher.
Leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly held the Mamata Banerjee government responsible for the death of the young former teacher.
“Had the state government accepted the Calcutta High Court order and submitted the list of tainted candidates, the job loss and this death could have been avoided,” Suvendu told The Telegraph Online.
State Congress president Shubhankar Sarkar asked, “Why was the police in such a rush to takeaway the body? Couldn’t they wait for some more time? The state government is responsible for what happened.”
In April this year, a division bench of the Supreme Court upheld the Calcutta High Court verdict from last year which cancelled the employment of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff government schools in Bengal and described the entire recruitment process as “vitiated”.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had announced 44,203 vacancies would be filled up in the fresh recruitment process, which the Supreme Court has ordered must be completed before December 31, 2025.
The sacked teachers have been demanding that they be reinstated in their and refuse to appear in fresh round of examination and viva.
The recruitment process as ordered by the Supreme Court must be completed by December 31.
“He was not keeping well since losing his job. He was under tremendous stress over the last several months,” said Soren’s sobbing wife at the hospital.
Soren along with lakhs of other candidates had applied for a teacher’s job after the School Service Commission’s 2016 notification, which turned into a sham with several education board officials, a minister and ruling party MLAs found to have accepted cash promising jobs to the applicants.
The state government and the School Service Commission, before both the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court, refused to give a list of the candidates who had secured their jobs by bribing officials.
“Our death certificates were written on April 3. Now we are collecting them one after the other. Subal Soren is among the first of our colleagues who died. This is murder,” said a protesting teacher.
Soren had worked for seven years since his appointment till the apex court struck down the entire recruitment process.
The chief minister had earlier blamed the CPM MP and senior lawyer Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya for having fought the case filed by the deprived candidates, who were allegedly denied employment.
