School jobs protest: Gheraoed SSC chairman gets to leave office after 40 hours

A section of the protesting jobless teachers, who have laid siege to the state School Service Commission (SSC) headquarters in Kolkata, allowed its chairman Siddhartha Majumdar to leave his office after 40 hours today, 23 April, Wednesday morning.

Majumdar is scheduled to appear before the Calcutta High Court today in connection with a hearing related to the presentation of OMR sheets of the 2016 SSC recruitment test.

The agitators, who launched the demonstration at 2:00 p.m. on 21 April, Monday, said their sit-in will continue, however.

Speaking to PTI, Majumdar said he has returned home and will take rest for some time before attending the court proceedings as per schedule.

One of the protesters, belonging to the Deserving Teachers Forum, said Majumdar was allowed to leave both because he had to be physically present at the court and also to give him some reprieve from confinement on health grounds.

“Our sit-in will continue as usual... Majumdar will again be gheraoed once he returns to his office after the court proceedings,” he said.

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday will hear a contempt petition against the West Bengal Department of School Education, claiming that it has not uploaded OMR sheets of 26,000 teaching and non-teaching staffers who lost their jobs following a Supreme Court judgement.

Around 2,000 jobless teachers launched the indefinite sit-in before the SSC headquarters on 21 April, the day the commission promised to upload the list of tainted and eligible candidates for the 2016 examinations but could not citing legal issues.

A delegation of the teachers met the SSC chairman on Tuesday, 22 April, and held a discussion, which they termed “partially satisfactory”.

“We are partially satisfied with the list of 17,206 teachers of whom 15,403 are eligible as confirmed by SSC,” spokesperson of the Deserving Teachers Forum Chinmoy Mondal told reporters after the meeting.

Altogether 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff of state-run and aided schools lost their jobs after the apex court found large-scale irregularities in the 2016 recruitment process and scrapped the entire panel on April 3.

The Supreme Court on 17 April extended till 31 December the services of terminated teachers found untainted by the CBI.