Fresh protests have erupted in West Bengal against the government’s decision to hold a new selection test for school teachers from the 2016 appointment panel, which was scrapped by the Supreme Court in April following the bribe-for-job case. Lawyers said a case has also been filed in the Calcutta high court challenging the move.
New job aspirants who appeared for the test for teacher positions for classes 11 and 12, alongside the jobless experienced teachers, blocked roads around the office of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) in Salt Lake on Monday evening, compelling the police to remove them by force.
The agitators said they could not qualify for the interview despite scoring high marks in the written test because the Commission had allotted 10 marks for teaching experience, which only the old appointees had.
“There are many amongst us who scored 60 out of 60 in the written examination. How can we score 70, the total marks, without having any experience? Making us sit for examinations alongside experienced teachers was a discriminatory decision by the state government,” Sanhita Sur, one of the agitators, said.
Chandan Biswas, another job aspirant, claimed, “The document verification process for Class 11 and 12 teachers started on Tuesday and will continue till December 4. We have been left out. Our agitation will not stop until we get justice.”
Krishnagopal Chakraborty, a 2016 panel teacher selected for the interview, expressed solidarity with the fresh examinees.
“I got 10 extra marks because of my experience. New posts should be created for the freshers,” Chakraborty said.
Written tests for selecting teachers for classes 9 and 10 have also been held and the examinees are waiting for the interview notice.
The appointments of all 25,752 school teachers and non-teaching staff (Group-C and D) from the 2016 recruitment panel were cancelled by the bench of the Chief Justice of India on April 3 after a series of hearings. The bench said there was no way to segregate the tainted from the non-tainted.
On an appeal by the state, the top court said on April 17 that only the non-tainted teachers may be allowed to continue their service until December 31, but they must go through a fresh selection test. The court, however, allowed age limit relaxation for these people.
After the written test results were published online it was found that around 12,000 of the old teachers had made it.
Notification for the test was published on May 30. Before that, chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced that an additional 11,517 new posts for class 9 and 10 teachers, 9,912 posts for class 11 and 12 teachers and 1,571 vacancies at Group-C and D level would be created.
Altering weightage criteria for different components in the selection test, the WBSSC earmarked 10 marks for “prior teaching experience”.
In June, the Calcutta high court allowed petitions challenging the format of the fresh selection test but did not pass any order since the tests were allowed by the Supreme Court.
“A fresh petition, challenging the extra marks for teaching experience, was filed before the single bench of justice Amrita Sinha on Monday,” lawyer Firdous Shamim, who represents the petitioners, said.
In a parallel development, a section of the non-tainted jobless teachers who did not pass the written examination have also started an agitation demanding creation of new posts.
State education minister Bratya Basu said the government has sympathy for those who could not make it.
“I have had a preliminary discussion with the chief minister regarding new vacancies but we cannot announce any decision without consulting legal experts,” Basu told the media.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, meanwhile, targeted Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday over the agitation, with general secretary Agnimitra Paul saying, “If Mamata Banerjee wanted a fair recruitment process then she should have ordered separate tests for fresh applicants and the jobless old teachers. We came to know that some of the tainted teachers appeared for the tests as well in violation of the Supreme Court order.”
