Kolkata, May 17 (PTI) West Bengal minister Firhad Hakim on Saturday criticised the teachers protesting outside the office of the Education Department, stating that they were demonstrating to "show their faces on TV".
Hakim's comment received a sharp retort from the opposition BJP, which alleged that the TMC was trying to intimidate the protesting teachers.
Hakim, the municipal affairs and urban development minister, said that despite the state government pledging all support to the nearly 26,000 teachers who lost their jobs because of the SC verdict, they have been protesting outside Bikash Bhavan -- the Education Department's office.
"When the state is doing everything possible to ensure that not a single deserving teacher loses his job, the siege of Bikash Bhavan is unacceptable. A section of teachers intruded the government office compound, locked its doors and confined the employees for over eight hours in these hot and humid conditions," he alleged.
"Even employees having ailing parents and little children at home, and those having medical issues, were not allowed to leave the premises despite repeated pleas. We can feel the anguish and pain of the teachers who lost their jobs, but can they hold hundreds of innocent people to ransom in this way? Is it democratic? Do these teachers want to show their faces on TVs in the name of protest?" he added.
He wondered why these teachers were not demonstrating in Delhi.
TMC leader Kunal Ghosh, meanwhile, said these teachers should not do anything that may jeopardise the state's legal battle to reinstate them.
BJP Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya alleged that the TMC was trying to intimidate the protesting teachers.
"The police thrashed the teachers when they were staging a democratic protest. Why should they be subjected to such brutality?" he asked.