On Wednesday, March 8, International Women's Day, female job applicants for teaching positions who had qualified in 2016 but remained unemployed, held a rally to draw attention to their situation. Around 200 candidates, dressed in black, marched from Sealdah railway station to the Mahatma Gandhi statue in central Kolkata. 

Some protesters repeatedly prostrated themselves on the ground throughout the rally, while others displayed placards calling on West Bengal's female Chief Minister, Mamta Banerjee, to  "wake up to the plight of the teaching job aspirants," stated a PTI report.

"Various programmes are held across the city on the occasion of International Women's Day but eligible School Service Commission (SSC) female candidates are staging a sit-in protest for over 720 days, yet the state government has turned a deaf ear to their plight," Madhurima Sinha, an SSC candidate, said. 

The spokesperson of Trinamool Congress Kunal Ghosh said the state education department was working in the "best interest" of the SSC hopefuls as directed by the court. "We request them to have patience. Not a single eligible candidate will be left out," Ghosh added as reported by PTI.