Sacked West Bengal teachers lay siege as School Service Commission misses tainted-untainted list deadline

Kolkata: The School Service Commission missed its Monday 6pm deadline of publishing the lists of “tainted” and “untainted” teachers, triggering chaos outside Acharya Sadan, its headquarters in Salt Lake.
Protesters, saying they had run out of patience, clashed with police and tried to breach barricades around the SSC headquarters several times as news trickled out that the SSC had devised a new “cut-off” to separate the “tainted” from the “untainted”: only the first three of the 20 rounds of counselling that took place between 2017 and 2019 would be considered valid, implying that teachers recruited from the fourth round would not feature in the list of the “untainted”.
This led to a day-long stand-off, with protesters barricading the SSC office with its chairperson Siddhartha Majumder inside. There were intermittent clashes with cops and, at one point in the evening, protesters even refused to let food meant for Majumdar and other officials enter the SSC headquarters.

SSC sources said the SC judgment striking down the appointment had noted that counselling and appointments were made after the expiry of the panel, which was “illegal and contrary to the rules”. The panel was valid for a year, within which three counselling sessions were held. The SSC needed to get a legal clarification on whether the SC order invalidates counselling sessions after the third round, they said.
Thirteen representatives from the protesting teachers’ ranks learnt about the new development when they met SSC Majumdar on Monday evening. They vehemently opposed the move and staged a sit-in demonstration inside the SSC office as their colleagues protested outside, arguing that the SSC petition in the Calcutta High Court said candidates appointed till the seventh round of counselling were eligible (candidates appointed after the eighth round, too, were included in later).
“Is this a joke?” Chinmay Mandal, who was in the team that spoke to SSC officials, asked. “We were told two separate lists would be published — tainted and untainted — and they gave this deadline. They now have yet another excuse. The SSC chairman has now told us that the fate of the remaining candidates appointed in the fourth to the eighth counselling rounds would be decided two-three days later. We will not leave till the segregated lists are published. The CM must hold a press conference and admit responsibility for our job loss. We demand a compensation of Rs 2 crore for each of us," he added.
Mehboob Mandal, another prominent face of the Qualified Teachers' Rights Platform, stated that the complete list of qualified teachers must be published.
"They are applying a divide-and-rule policy to break our unity. But they will not succeed. We will not accept the new counselling theory. They have to publish the segregated list,” he demanded.
The agitating teachers blocked Derozio Bhavan, the office of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education as well to stop its president, Ramanuj Ganguly, from leaving. There were also demands for SSC chairman Majumdar's and state education minister Bratya Basu's resignation.
Group C and Group D staffers held a separate protest march to the WBBSE office and staged a sit-in protest, demanding their issue, too, be raised at the Supreme Court just like the state had done for teachers (which led to the temporary reprieve till 2025 end).