By Dipali Banka | January 12, 2025
On the sidewalks of Kolkata’s crowded Dharamtala, the former capital of British India, the clatter of bottles echoed as over 500 teachers braved the winter nights, protesting for job security.
For the first few days, we were unable to put a roof over our heads but now we have been able to manage one for the night, said Pratap Guha Roychowdhury, a high school teacher from South 24 Parganas, West Bengal.
Teachers have been protesting in Kolkata since 27th December 2024.
The Calcutta High Court scrapped all but one of the over 25,000 appointments made by the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) in 2016 after it detected irregularities in the appointment of teachers.
The High Court found that the number of appointments made by the commission for teaching and non-teaching staff were higher than the declared vacancies. Individuals who were not part of the 2016 panel or had submitted blank Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets were also selected. OMR is a technology that reads and identifies marks made on paper, often used as an efficient way to examine large number of answer sheets.
They directed the collection of salaries and benefits with 12% annual interest from persons appointed outside the selection panel.
The merit list containing the marks obtained by candidates was never published and people with low ranks were preferred over people placed higher in rank. The court is yet to identify the total beneficiaries of illegalities and said the SSC had inflated the number of posts to accommodate illegal appointees.
“I quit my previous job because I was confident I would secure this teaching post,” said Aditi Basu, a teacher at Dakshineshwar Bharati Bhawan Girl’s High School. Basu worked at an engineering college before she took a cut in salary for a more secure job at the government school.
Basu is one of the many teachers who rejected other job opportunities in favor of what she saw as a stable career in public service.
Teachers sacrifice nights with their children to fight for job security
“They (the commission) intended to save even those members who got on the panel through bribes so that if the panel remains, everyone on it remains. It is what they’re reattempting at the Supreme Court. That either they sail together or sink together,” said Roychowdhury, referring to what led to the cancelling of the 2016 panel.
Queries send to WBSSC and Department of School Education did not elicit a response.
The Supreme Court stayed the Calcutta High court order on 7 May, 2024 after a petition from the West Bengal government. The apex court directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to continue their probe into the matter. The top court has deferred the hearing date three times, making the teachers anxious about their career and future.
“We have come to the conclusion that our main sin has been appearing for the 2016 SSC examinations fair and square and as a repentance for my sins, I’ve shaved my hair totally,” said Rajat Haldar, a physical science teacher at Subhasnagar High School. “In order to non-violently continue with our activism, I felt that sacrificing my hair would be an appropriate medium to voice our grievances and attract attention.”
Already burdened by the shortage of staff and retiring teachers, state-owned schools in West Bengal struggle more as other teachers protest in the streets.
“It’s causing some challenges, especially because the teachers participating in the protest are our science teachers, and their absence is being felt,” said Avinanda Ghosh Dastidar the headmistress of Tiljala Balika Vidyalaya. The last recruitment was in 2016. Since then, more teachers have retired, and the number of vacancies has only increased, she said.
Out of the total 11,610 and 5,596 recommendations made for the position of assistant teachers for class 9-10 and 11-12 only 9% and 15% irregularities were found in the CBI investigation.
“If there were irregularities, investigate and hold the culprits accountable,” said Roychowdhury. “Why should we, who cleared all the tests and interviews, suffer?”
The CBI has filed multiple chargesheets into the alleged irregularities in the recruitment process for various positions under the SSC. The probe revealed that SSC had contracted NYSA Communications Pvt. Ltd., a company that specialises in education software development, to scan and evaluate OMR answer sheets for recruitment exams for Group D, Group C, and assistant teachers. They found significant discrepancies between the marks recorded in SSC’s database and those recovered from three hard disks seized during the investigation from Pankaj Bansal, a former NYSA employee.
The Calcutta High Court established a series of irregularities and violations. The SSC appointed NYSA for scanning and evaluating the OMR sheets by a closed-door tender process, which violates Article 16 (equal opportunity in public employment) of the Constitution of India. NYSA then subcontracted the work to a third party to scan the OMR sheets. The scanning was done at the office premises of SSC.
SSC said that it was not aware of the involvement of the third party in scanning of the OMR sheets.
The Original OMR sheets were destroyed by SSC as it said it had scanned copies. The commission provided copies of the OMR sheets to Right to Information (RTI) applicants. No such copies were found by the CBI on the SSC’s servers.
Teachers protesting in Kolkata ask only one question- “What is my fault in this situation?”. Over 15,000 jobs are at stake due to the illegal appointments and manipulated OMR sheets.
“One must show evidence. After spending years cultivating a rich academic experience, if someone suddenly claims that we’re all fraud, there’s no way we’re going to accept it” said Basu.
The bench hearing the matter has changed, so we don’t know if the matter will go on from the point that it was before or whether it will start all over again, said Jaideep Gupta, the advocate representing SSC. “We can’t say anything just now on the outcome, or the likely outcome of this.”
The top court has scheduled the next hearing for January 15th 2025.