Bengal SSC exam candidates withdraw hunger strike

Over 400 successful School Service Commission (SSC) examination candidates withdrew their 29-day relay hunger strike on Thursday, a day after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met them with the assurance that her government would try to find a solution within the first week of June after Lok Sabha elections are over.

The candidates ended their agitation following a meeting with state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee, but said they would review the situation after the first week of June.

A five-member delegation of the hunger strikers met Chatterjee, who reiterated the promise made by the Chief Minister.

The SSC aspirants were holding the hunger strike at central Kolkata's Mayo Road since February 28, accusing the state government of irregularities in appointing assistant teachers at the state-run schools and demanded that the available vacancies be immediately filled.

The agitating candidates, all of whom have successfully cleared both SSC written test and interview more than a year back, have urged the state government to publish the full list of candidates, qualified in the SSC examination along with the details of marks obtained by them and notify the exact number of vacancies for teachers in the state-run schools.

Nearly 80 agitators, many of them women, had fallen ill while two would be mothers suffered a miscarriage and two more persons got infected by Dengue during the hunger strike, the agitators had claimed.

--IANS

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