A group of Teachers' Eligibility Test (TET) candidates from West Bengal, who claimed to have qualified the test in the past but are yet to get appointment as primary school teachers, staged a protest demanding immediate recruitment. They blocked a major road in South Kolkata for the purpose.
The incident occurred at about 1:30 pm on June 22, Wednesday. About 100 protesters blocked the Asutosh Mukherjee Road-Hazra Road crossing and refused to move from the spot despite being asked to do so by the police. They were then taken into police custody. The TET candidates alleged that they were manhandled by the police and even pushed to the ground in the tussle.
However, a Kolkata police officer denied the charge and said that they had to clear the busy thoroughfare to maintain the traffic flow. He further stated that the police exercised restraint despite provocation by the candidates, as mentioned in a report by PTI.
A protester, Kaushik Saha, said, "We had qualified in the examination and interview in 2014 but have not received appointment letters. This is a question of our life and death." Another protester, Debarshi Banik, said, "Not 50-100 but over a thousand TET eligible candidates had been ignored for recruitment while those having scored lesser marks got jobs. We will not rest till we get justice."
The protests come at a time when a CBI probe into West Bengal school teachers' recruitment scam is continuing as per orders from the Calcutta High Court. The state's Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had spoken about the probe in the state assembly on Monday, June 20, saying, "We have tried to create jobs unlike those who go to court to ensure people are sacked. We have given jobs to nearly one lakh people (in the school education department). Of them, there can be 50-100 cases where mistakes have been made."
BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar and Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari expressed solidarity with the agitators alleging they were deprived of their legitimate jobs by the government who violated all rules to recruit candidates from the families of Trinamool Congress loyalists' for jobs in teachers posts, as reported by PTI.
On the other hand, TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh slammed the opposition for politicising the issue "and instigating the protests". He asserted that if there were any irregularities in the appointments, those would be addressed by the government.
