Teachers who lost jobs rally outside Bengal SSC headquarters, demand release of 2016 recruitment list

Kolkata: Hundreds of teaching and non-teaching staff, whose appointments were invalidated following the Supreme Court order on April 3, staged a protest outside the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) office on Monday, demanding the immediate publication of the list of candidates who had qualified in the 2016 SSC recruitment test.

Education Minister Bratya Basu had on April 11 said the WBSSC would publish the complete list of untainted and tainted candidates separately on its website within two weeks.

A spokesperson for the Deserving Teachers Rights Forum also claimed that during discussions, WBSSC chairman Siddhartha Majumdar and Basu had promised the list would be uploaded by April 21.

The protestors marched from Karunamoyee Central Park to Acharya Bhavan — the WBSSC headquarters at Wipro More — before launching a sit-in, reiterating their demand that the promised list be published by the stated deadline.

"We will not budge from this spot until the WBSSC publishes the total and comprehensive list today. We are not ready to return to schools until the Commission officially acknowledges our status as eligible candidates,” said Sutapa Malick, one of the teachers affected by the court ruling.

A spokesperson from the Deserving Teachers Rights Forum said, "The government has to live up to its promise and clear our names officially. We are not ready to return to schools until this uncertainty about our future is resolved by the Commission." The Supreme Court, in its April 3 verdict, declared the entire 2016 recruitment panel created by the SSC as null and void, citing widespread irregularities.

The ruling led to the termination of around 26,000 teaching and non-teaching staff from state-run and state-aided schools across West Bengal.