Teachers start relay hunger strike to protest job loss, police action

Kolkata: A section of teachers who lost their jobs following a Supreme Court judgment which held that the whole appointment process was tainted, on Thursday began a relay hunger strike outside the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) office in protest over the issue.

Joining the protesters, BJP MP Abhijit Gangopadhyay who is a former judge of the Calcutta High Court, blamed the state administration and its wings for their plight.

The teachers and other staff who lost their jobs said that they were also protesting police action against their compatriots at the district inspector (DI) of schools' office at Kasba in south Kolkata on Wednesday.

"We started a relay hunger strike agitation with one teacher at the beginning and will soon chalk out further programme to protest the issue," one of the protesters told reporters outside the SSC office at Salt Lake here.

The agitating teachers have been holding a sit-in outside the SSC office building 'Acharya Sadan' since Wednesday night to protest the loss of jobs and police action against their compatriots.

The protesters alleged they were subjected to baton-charge and were even kicked and shoved around by law enforcement personnel during their agitation outside the DI office, situated beside Kasba police station of the Kolkata Police.

Noting that the police have lodged cases against the protesting teachers over Wednesday's protest at Kasba, Gangopadhyay said that this should not have been done.

"Cases have been lodged against innocent teachers who lost their jobs for the illegal acts of others," the BJP MP told reporters.

Maintaining that he had not gone to meet Education Minister Bratya Basu on Wednesday in protest against the police action, he said that the BJP leadership was with him in his decision.

Gangopadhyay said that he, along with former Rajya Sabha MP Rupa Ganguly, came to the protest site at Acharya Sadan to express solidarity with the teachers and other staff who lost their jobs.

Gangopadhyay, as a judge of the Calcutta High Court, had ordered a CBI investigation in November 2021 into alleged irregularities in the recruitment process.

He had also ordered the termination of more than 25,000 jobs of teaching and non-teaching staff in West Bengal government-run and -aided schools after finding irregularities in the process.

This order was upheld by a division bench of the high court and thereafter by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on April 3 upheld a 2024 Calcutta High Court judgment annulling the recruitment of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff appointed through a recruitment drive by SSC in 2016, terming the entire selection process "vitiated and tainted".

Those who were rendered jobless claimed that the reason behind their plight was the inability of the SSC to differentiate between the candidates who secured employment through fraudulent means and those who did not.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested former West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee and some others, who held positions in the state's SSC when the irregularities in the recruitment process took place.