WBSSC case: Jobless teachers reach CM Banerjee's doorstep; whisked away by cops

Kolkata, May 29 (IANS) A group of ‘untainted’ teachers in West Bengal, who lost their jobs following a Supreme Court order last month in the cash-for-job case, reached Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s official residence on Thursday morning to meet her and update her on their condition.

However, the teachers, who turned up at the Chief Minister’s residence without an appointment, did not get the chance to meet Mamata Banerjee.

They were taken away by the security personnel deployed near the Chief Minister’s official residence at Kalighat in South Kolkata.

A city police officer said that on Thursday morning, suddenly, a group of five teachers, all women, arrived at the doorsteps of the Chief Minister’s residence with a plea to meet her, without a prior appointment.

The police personnel there denied them entry and explained to them that meeting the Chief Minister without a prior appointment was not possible.

However, the women teachers started arguing with them.

Soon the security personnel, with the assistance of female cops, first detained them, put them into a police van, and took them away from near the Chief Minister’s residence. They were taken to the nearby Kalighat Police Station for interrogation.

The five detained teachers are Sahani Naznin, Rupa Karmakar, Shilpi Chakraborty, Nur Amina Gulshan and Sangeeta Saha.

During the altercations with the police personnel, Saha told media persons that since they did not have the time to seek an appointment, they came directly to the Chief Minister’s residence.

“Since the beginning, we had been seeking appointments with the Chief Minister. We had a hope that the Chief Minister would understand what we had been going through,” she said.

Earlier this week, the Chief Minister announced that the West Bengal School Service Commission’s (WBSSC) notification for fresh recruitments to vacant posts for teaching and non-teaching jobs will be issued on May 30.

She stated that even the ‘untainted’ teachers, who had lost their jobs following a Supreme Court order in the cash-for-job case, would have to appear for the written examination for recruitment.

However, insiders from the state secretariat said that the notification might be issued by Thursday evening.

On April 3, a Supreme Court Bench while upholding a previous order of the Calcutta High Court, which annulled 25,753 school appointments made through the WBSSC, also directed the state government to start a fresh recruitment process by issuing notifications or advertisements for the same by May 31.

Since the teachers who had got their jobs without paying any money had been insisting that they would not appear for a fresh written examination, the Chief Minister clarified that after the Supreme Court’s order, there was no other option before them but to appear for the test.

--IANS

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