BJP youth wing extends support to fasting teachers, threatens to step up protests

Kolkata: BJP Yuva Morcha state president Indranil Khan on Thursday extended his support to a section of teachers who began a relay hunger strike outside the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) office, protesting the loss of their jobs after a Supreme Court ruling nullified their appointments.

Khan vowed not to remain silent until justice is delivered and warned that the party would intensify street-level protests if the matter remains unresolved.

The agitating teachers—part of the 25,753 whose appointments were cancelled after the Supreme Court deemed the 2016 SSC recruitment process "vitiated and tainted"—have launched an indefinite relay hunger strike demanding redressal.

Khan demanded that the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) immediately publish the OMR list of the SSC 2016 recruitment test at the earliest alleging the state government was "not allowing the SSC to publish the list to shield certain elements within the ruling TMC who had helped tainted candidates crack the SSC test in exchange of money".

Asked about the comments made by West Bengal minister and senior TMC leader Firhad Hakim that the protesting candidates could wait for some time to help the state find an amicable solution to the impasse, Khan wondered if Hakim could guarantee the job security of the 'untainted' teachers in the wake of the SC order which practically invalidated their jobs.

He accused Hakim and other senior government functionaries of being "inhuman and insensitive" to the plight and agonies of thousands of young meritorious students who toiled hard and studied for years to qualify for the SSC exams and faced with a disaster in their lives due to sudden loss of job in the wake of the apex court order.

Khan further accused the ruling dispensation of aiding and abetting arrested ministers like Partha Chatterjee "to commit irregularities" giving them police escorts as VVIPs. Their unscrupulous activities led to the present crisis "affecting thousands of eligible teachers".

"A scandal of such a scale involving teachers' recruitment is unprecedented in the country," he added.

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

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.

The order was upheld by a division bench of the Calcutta 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".

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.