WBSSC chairman stuck in office for over 24 hours as sit-in protest by 'genuine' candidates continues

Kolkata, April 22 (IANS) For over 24 hours, the chairman of West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC), Siddhartha Majumdar, has been stuck in his office at Salt Lake in the northern outskirts of Kolkata, where 'genuine' losers of school jobs are continuing with their sit-in demonstration on Tuesday.

Majumdar arrived at his office as per schedule on Monday morning, and since then, he has not been able to come out of that office. The protesters started their sit-in demonstration blocking all the entry and exit gates of the commission’s office on Monday evening and are continuing on Tuesday.

WBSSC was supposed to publish the list segregating the “genuine” candidates from the “tainted” ones, who got jobs paying money.

Accordingly, "genuine” candidates started assembling in front of the WBSSC office on Monday afternoon. However, things flared up by Monday evening as information surfaced from within the WBSSC office that only the list finalised in three of a total of 12 counselling sessions for the WBSSC panel for 2016 will be published.

The agitating teachers got irked over the information, and they started protesting vehemently and tried to enter the commission’s office by breaking through the barricades raised by police. This led to a scuffle between the protesters and the cops. Some of the protesters, including some women, reportedly fell sick following the scuffle.

Thereafter, the protesters started a sit-in demonstration in front of the WBSSC office, blocking all the entry and exit gates. They said that they will continue with their agitation indefinitely and till the time, the segregated list for all the counseling sessions for the 2016 panel is made public by the commission.

The protesters started total non-cooperation with the WBSSC authorities from Monday night as they prevented the delivery of food from the food-delivery service to the office of the chairman. On Tuesday morning, the protesters prevented a local tea vendor from supplying tea to the chairman’s office.

“The rampant corruption on the part of the state government and the commission has brought us to the streets. So we will not cooperate with them at any cost. We will continue with our sit-in demonstration in front of the WBSSC office indefinitely till our demands are met,” said a protester.

Majumdar, meanwhile, has claimed that the protesters outside the office were not just job-losing teaching and non-teaching staff, but many outsiders have joined them in the protests.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court division bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar upheld the order of the Calcutta High Court’s division bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi last year, cancelling WBSSC’s entire panel for 2016 of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching jobs.

The apex court also accepted the observation of the Calcutta High Court that the entire panel had to be cancelled because of the failure on the part of the state government and WBSSC to segregate the “genuine” candidates from the “tainted" ones, who got jobs paying money.

Thereafter, at a meeting of a delegation of “genuine” candidates with state Education Minister Bratya Basu, the state government assured the publication of the “segregate” list, but as per the legal advice, by April 21. However, that deadline ended on Monday, and the segregated list was not published.

--IANS

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