Bengal teachers insist they won’t take re-exam; delegation off to Delhi

Six representatives of the Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum (DTRF), a body of ‘untainted’ teachers whose jobs were invalidated after an April 3 Supreme Court order, met West Bengal Education Department officials on Monday to voice their demands, including reinstating jobs without re-examinations.

This follows their ultimatum on Saturday, wherein they asserted that they would escalate their protests if the government did not meet them by Monday.

The six representatives from DTRF included , Rakesh Alam, Chinmoy Mondal, Aparajita Panda, Habibullah, and Amit Ranjan Bhuiyan. They met the Principal Secretary of the Education Department, Binod Kumar, and the Secretary Subhra Chakrabarti, at the State Education Department headquarters at Bikash Bhawan on Monday afternoon.

“First and foremost, we wanted to meet the Education Minister [Bratya Basu] today. When we walked into Bikash Bhawan, we had hoped he would be present inside but he wasn’t. While some of our queries were answered, the officials did not have answers to everything,” said Mr. Habibullah.

On April 3, the Supreme Court upheld the Calcutta High Court’s order, invalidating the job appointments of nearly 26,000 teaching and non-teaching staff in State and State-aided schools. The apex court cited the entire hiring process of 2016, conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC), as ‘vitiated and tainted’.

Since then, protests have erupted among ‘sacked’ teachers across the State, with thousands participating in an ongoing sit-in demonstration outside Bikash Bhawan since earlier this month.

At the meeting, the teachers sought clarification on issues such as the State’s review petition, and the new recruitment process for the 2016 panel. “We were shown a draft of the review petition that the government filed at the Supreme Court. They have made a strong legal case in favour of the untainted teachers getting back their jobs. However, they could not assure us fully that the review petition would be accepted by the apex court or that it would be partly heard before the court’s summer vacation,” said Mr. Ghosh.

He added that the untainted teachers reiterated that they will not appear for a re-exam and a fresh selection process. The Supreme Court had, however, directed the West Bengal government to initiate fresh recruitments for the cancelled 2016 panel by May 31 this year.

“The Education Department officials told us that the government cannot bypass a directive by the Supreme Court. However, we raised questions about whether the fresh recruitment process can be stalled till the Supreme Court accepts or rejects the review petition. They replied they are bound to obey the Supreme Court order,” Mr. Ghosh said.

‘Honest ability’

He said the untainted teachers were recruited based on their “honest ability” in 2016, and therefore should not be forced to prove their worth again. “We are not in the mental or physical condition to undergo another recruitment process. We had already proven our worth for this job once. We told them that many of us are ailing and cannot appear for these exams. We asked them to reinstate our jobs without new selections,” Mr. Ghosh said.

Mr. Habibullah claimed that the officials did not have satisfactory answers to some of their queries, like whether the teachers who suffered from strokes, etc., from stress after losing their jobs, would have to appear for reselection.

He said the DTRF representatives want to meet the Education Minister or the Chief Minister because “only they would have the answers to some of their questions.”

Meanwhile, a delegation of ‘untainted teachers’ left for Delhi on Monday, hoping to meet the PM and the President. They also plan to petition the SC for the public release of mirror image copies of answer sheets from the 2016 SSC recruitment exam.