Bengal school teachers start fresh agitation, demand release of OMR list

KOLKATA:A large number of Bengal school teachers appointed in 2016 launched a fresh agitation outside the office of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) on Monday, demanding that the authorities release the full list of tainted and non-tainted appointments.

The agitators, who claimed to have passed the selection test because of merit and not by paying bribe, blocked the road outside the WBSSC office at Salt Lake and refused to move until the full list was released.

The Supreme Court on April 3 scrapped the appointment of 25,752 Bengal government appointed 2016-batch school teachers and non-teaching staff in connection with the bribe-for-job allegations. On an appeal by the state government, the top court allowed the untainted assistant teachers, who lost their jobs following the court’s earlier order in the West Bengal recruitment scam, to continue in service until fresh hiring. The court also ordered the government to issue ads for the recruitment process by May 31 and complete the process by December 31.

WBSSC chairman Siddhartha Majumdar held a round of talks with the agitators on Monday evening, hours after the Calcutta high court division bench of justices Debangsu Basak and Shabbar Rashidi heard a contempt petition filed by the jobless teachers and observed that WBSSC had failed to meet the deadline set by the court for releasing the list of tainted and non-tainted teachers.

Neither Majumdar nor any state official made any statement on the events till 9.30 pm although education minister Bratya Basu said on April 10 that “WBSSC will release the lists by April 21.”

Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said: “The government is looking into this. We cannot comment.”

The affected teachers claimed that Majumdar told them in the evening that he could release the list of only those appointees cleared by the first three counselling in 2016. The agitators refused to accept this.

“Majumdar claimed those cleared by the fourth counselling and onwards were ineligible candidates. How can he say this after numerous court hearings since 2022? The government never said this in court,” Suman Biswas, an affected teacher, said.

A huge police contingent was posted outside the WBSSC office amid rising tension. The impasse continued till 9.30 pm.

The agitators, who threatened to go for a hunger strike, threw away the food packets and water that some WBSSC staff were trying to carry inside the building for their colleagues.

In May 2022, the then Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the appointment of non-teaching staff (Group C and D) and teaching staff by WBSSC and West Bengal Board of Secondary Education between 2014 and 2021 when Partha Chatterjee was education minister. Many appointees allegedly paid bribes in the range of ₹5-15 lakh to get jobs after failing the selection tests.

The Enforcement Directorate, which started a parallel probe and arrested Chatterjee in July 2022, filed charges against him, ex-primary education board president and legislator Manik Bhattacharya and 52 others in January this year.

Around midnight, WBSSC issued a statement saying it will follow the orders of the Supreme Court in regard to the 2016 appointments and the teachers would get their salary on time.

Education minister Bratya Basu said the state government has consulted lawyers in this connection. "It is the state education department's responsibility (to pay salaries) and we have consulted lawyers. Teachers will get their salaries," Basu said.

Teachers, however, stuck to their demand for the release of the list of tainted and untainted appointees.

"Our main demand is the release of the list. We will not step back from this. The agitation will continue," said Mitali Sarkar.