Kolkata: A group of ‘eligible’ school teachers of the 2016 panel, whose jobs were annulled following a Supreme Court order, staged a rally here on Wednesday demanding justice, transparency, and exemption from re-examination.
The rally from Karunamoyee to Bikash Bhavan, West Bengal Secondary Education Department’s headquarters in Salt Lake, is among many protests carried out against the “state-sponsored conspiracy to shield corruption”, the protesting teachers said.
The protesters, under heavy police deployment near Bikash Bhavan, alleged that they were victims of a “deep and dirty conspiracy” jointly orchestrated by the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) and the state government. They maintained that they had secured their jobs through a valid selection process and were not implicated in any of the corruption scandals under investigation.
“We are not afraid of sitting for the exam. But why should we, when we are not tainted?” said one of the demonstrators. They asserted that the issue was not about proving merit again but about restoring their dignity and rights.
The agitating teachers reiterated their demand for the immediate release of the “mirror image” of their OMR answer sheets for transparency.
They also called for the publication of a comprehensive list of eligible candidates who have not been named in any CBI reports or corruption-related findings. They insisted that the list of eligible and ineligible candidates be published separately to prevent confusion and preserve the dignity of legitimate recruits.
They claimed that the list of untainted 15,203 teachers who had been appointed by the SSC and the state government should be released to get back their jobs without re-examination process.
The protesters alleged that while a few individuals had been identified as corrupt, no action had been taken against them to recover illicit gains or terminate their services, while many untainted teachers were arbitrarily removed.
They questioned why there had been no contempt proceedings against the officials responsible for retaining tainted candidates, and accused the SSC of attempting to shield all candidates, corrupt and innocent alike, under a single re-examination order.
In contrast, the state government has maintained that it is conducting the new examination in compliance with Supreme Court directives, aimed at ensuring transparency and fairness in the recruitment process.
Altogether 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff of state-run and -aided schools lost their jobs after the Supreme Court found large-scale irregularities in the 2016 recruitment process and scrapped the entire panel on April 3.
Those who were rendered jobless claimed that the reason behind their plight was the inability of the SSC, which appointed them, to differentiate between the candidates who secured employment through fraudulent means and those who did not.
