KOLKATA: Teachers who have been rendered jobless following a Supreme Court verdict and on an indefinite sit-in before the West Bengal School Service Commission headquarters, on Tuesday accused Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of making "false promises of job security."
They also alleged that the SSC has lost all credibility after its failure to publish the list of untainted candidates and, by extension, identifying the deserving teachers, by the deadline of 6 pm on Monday.
The CM, earlier in the day, urged the protesting teachers to return to work, assuring them that her government will protect their salaries.
"You don't need to worry about who is tainted and who is not. You only need to worry about whether you have your job and whether you are getting your salaries on time. The list to identify the tainted and untainted teachers remains with the government and the courts," Banerjee said at an administrative programme in Midnapore.
"We assure that your jobs are safe for now, and you will get your salaries. Please return to your schools and resume classes. I have spoken about this several times since last night. We are with you," she said.
Banerjee also warned the protesting teachers not to fall prey to those trying to provoke them.
"Had I been in Kolkata, I could have solved the issue within seconds. Do not pay heed to those who are provoking you. Let the state government look after it," she said.
"The CM asked us not to be apprehensive about the list of the tainted and untainted. She said the government will take care of that. After their failure to come up with the list of untainted candidates on the SSC website as promised on April 22, do they have any more credibility?" Samirul Islam, a retrenched teacher of Malda district, told PTI sitting in front of the SSC office.
He alleged that the state government is only trying to buy time so that the movement fizzles out.
About Banerjee's statement that the state has not put a brake on their salary, Dipankar Bhowmik, a jobless teacher of Dakshin Dinajpur district, said, "What she has claimed will not stand judicial scrutiny. She has not uttered a single word about the continuation of our job till retirement after the annulment in the Supreme Court order on April 3. We are not ready to buy her hollow promises."
The Supreme Court on April 17 extended till December 31 the services of terminated teachers found untainted by the CBI.
Promita Mallick, a teacher of Malda, asserted that the CM's promise of solving the impasse in seconds had she been in Kolkata holds no significance.
"She hasn't cared to visit us or meet us all this while. She is only interested in rhetoric. What prevented her from addressing the issue in the past one year?" she asked.
Altogether 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff of state-run and -aided schools lost their jobs after the Supreme Court found large-scale irregularities in the 2016 recruitment process and scrapped the entire panel on April 3.
Education Minister Bratya Basu also requested the agitators to refrain from doing anything that might weaken the review petition that the state government was planning to file before the Supreme Court.
Speaking to reporters in the afternoon, the education minister informed that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, in its April 17 appeal before the Supreme Court to modify its April 3 order, had submitted by means of an affidavit that 17,502 recruited teachers and non-teaching staff from the 2016 panel have 'not been specified as tainted".
Those who lost their jobs claimed that the reason behind their plight was the inability of the SSC, which appointed them, to differentiate between the candidates who secured employment through fraudulent means and those who did not.