West Bengal School Service Commission holds talks with ‘sacked' teachers
The delegation belonged to the Jogyo Shikkhok Shikkhika Adhikar Mancha (JSSAM). No conclusion was reached at the meeting by the time of this report being published.
Hundreds of 'untainted' teachers, who lost their jobs after an April 3 Supreme Court order invalidating nearly 26,000 teaching and non-teaching jobs, gathered at Karunamoyee in Bidhannagar on Thursday and marched to the WBSSC office. They raised slogans demanding their jobs be reinstated, as about hundred-odd police personnel stood guard around and inside the office premises.
The 'untainted' teachers underlined four crucial demands. These include publishing their original OMR sheets and a list of 'untainted' candidates from the cancelled 2016 recruitment panel certified by the WBSSC.
Additionally, they have demanded that the new recruitment process be kept on hold till the review petition is heard by the apex court, and for their jobs to be kept intact through a 'repanelling' process where the original OMR sheets from 2016 are re-evaluated for a new merit list without tainted candidates.
The situation arose after the Supreme Court cancelled the entirety of the recruitment panel of 2016, citing a 'vitiated and tainted' hiring by the WBSSC. The apex court consequently directed the West Bengal government to complete a fresh recruitment process for assistant teachers' positions by December 31, till when the 'sacked' teachers have been allowed to work with full salaries.
'While it is true that the State and the WBSSC filed review petitions at the Supreme Court, the deadline for the online application for fresh recruitments is before the apex court reopens after summer recess. This has been done by design to put pressure on us. We will not appear for a reselection, and especially not before the review petition yields a result,' a protesting 'untainted and sacked' teacher, Suvojit Das, told The Hindu.
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