SSC imbroglio: Teaching aspirants hold twin protests over 'biased' marking scheme, recruitment delay

Kolkata, Nov 24 (PTI) On a day the West Bengal School Service Commission is scheduled to publish the SLST results for recruitment of teachers to classes 9-10, two groups of job aspirants held separate protest marches here on Monday over “illegal” mark allotment and recruitment delays, reflecting persisting unrest in the state’s school education sector.

Thousands of fresh SSC aspirants to classes 11 and 12 took out a march from the Sealdah Station in north Kolkata, breached multiple police barricades and clashed with personnel in uniform to reach the Esplanade area of central Kolkata, their destination.

The unrest broke out after police denied permission to protesters to march along their planned route to the Y-channel in Esplanade and tried to divert them to the Ramleela Maidan on CIT Road instead, which the protesters refused to accept.

Till reports last received, the agitating aspirants were holding a sit-in at the Esplanade crossing, throwing traffic along the arterial intersection out of gear.

The new aspirants demanded scrapping of the 'experience'-based 10 marks granted to previously appointed teachers whose panel was cancelled by the court in the jobs scam case, public display of all OMR sheets, and creation of one lakh additional teaching posts.

"We will continue our agitation against the unlawful 10 marks. We worked day and night doing tuition to pay for the exam application fee, and now we are not eligible despite securing full marks,” a protester said.

The provision of 10 extra marks for experience to former teachers whose appointments were annulled has emerged as a major point of contention among new candidates and has been challenged before both the Supreme Court as well as the Calcutta High Court.

In a separate mobilisation, hundreds of candidates from the 2016 Upper Primary batch marched from the Karunamoyee crossing in Salt Lake to Bikash Bhaban, the state education department headquarters, demanding completion of the long-pending appointment process.

Though results were declared nearly a decade ago and a court had directed recruitment of 14,052 candidates, appointments of 1,241 qualified aspirants remain stalled despite completing all formalities, including interviews, the protesters alleged, while holding a sit-in near Central Park in Salt Lake.

The protesters claimed that counselling — the final step before appointment — had not been conducted despite a Supreme Court–upheld directive that set November 20 as the deadline.

“It is contempt of the Supreme Court order. Despite the deadline, we are being pushed back and forth between authorities. The chairman asks us to go to Bikash Bhavan for vacancy matching, and officials there direct us back to the chairman,” a protester said. PTI BSM SMY BDC