Sacked teachers head from West Bengal to Delhi to attend SC hearing

A delegation of sacked teachers from West Bengal left for New Delhi on Monday to attend the upcoming Supreme Court hearing and to seek nationwide political support for their demands. The group also announced an assembly campaign on June 16, warning of a protest if their issues remained unresolved.

From the Kolkata airport, Suman Biswas, one of the key faces of the protest, said, "By going to Delhi, we will try to draw the attention of the Prime Minister, President and leaders of various national parties towards our problems."

The move came after West Bengal teaching and non-teaching staff lost jobs in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict on April 3 that upheld a prior Calcutta High Court decision to annul recruitments made through the 2016 recruitment conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) 

 

Around 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff in West Bengal lost their jobs because of alleged corruption in various examinations conducted by the state's School Service Commission.

The bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar found that the West Bengal SSC's selection process was based on large-scale manipulations and fraud, and ordered the TMC government to initiate a fresh selection process. 

 

A section of the teachers are planning to file a review petition as well as to meet President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister, along with other MPs and leading politicians, with an appeal for reinstatement.

They also called for a 'Bidhan Sabha Aviyan' on June 16, demanding the release of the mirror image of their Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets to identify the genuine candidates.

Earlier on April 3, the Supreme Court upheld the Calcutta High Court's decision to quash the recruitment of more than 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staff by the WBSSC in 2016 for the state-run and aided schools. The top court's verdict came on a petition filed by the West Bengal government that challenged an April 2022 order of the Calcutta High Court.