West Bengal: “Qualified” TET candidates demonstrate for employment in schools

Sitting in front of the office of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education in Salt Lake on Monday, hundreds of individuals who stated that they had passed the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) in 2014 demanded that they be granted immediate job appointment letters and staged a sit-in demonstration.

The protesters claimed that they had participated in two interviews after passing the written portion of the TET 2014 examination, but that they were not offered jobs through its panel, which the board claimed had run out of positions to fill.

The candidates demanded that they be appointed as teachers in West Bengal government-sponsored and -aided schools based on the previous merit list. They stated that they would not want to appear for a new examination, which was announced by the government for this year. This year, the government plans to hold a new examination.

The demonstrators had initially blocked the road during the day at the popular Karunamoyee crossing, and then they relocated their demonstration to the adjoining primary education board building.

They refused to end the demonstration despite the efforts of the police to convince them to do so.

One of the candidates, a woman, who was taking part in the demonstration, posed the question: “Why should we appear for another exam, having already cleared all rounds in 2014?”

Manik Bhattacharya, who served as the chairman of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education and was also a member of the ruling Trinamool Congress, was taken into custody on October 11 by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the alleged irregularities in the recruitment process for primary teachers in the state of West Bengal.

A number of petitions have been made before the Calcutta High Court alleging graft in the appointment process of teachers at state-sponsored and -aided schools. As a result of an order from that court, Bhattacharya was removed from his position as chairman of the board of directors.