Agitating school teachers meet Bengal chief secy with list of demands

Kolkata, Jul 14 (PTI) West Bengal Chief Secretary Manoj Pant on Monday met a group of "eligible and untainted" school teachers, whose appointments were annulled by the Supreme Court, at the state secretariat and heard their demands, an official said.
    During the meeting, the teachers demanded that the state government publish a list of “tainted and untainted” candidates by Monday night, he said.
    “We cannot say that the meeting was fruitful. We have urged the chief secretary to come out with the list by tonight. However, we are unsure whether that will happen,” said a teacher, who was part of the 23-member delegation that met the bureaucrat and other senior officials.
    “We will decide our next course of action based on the state government’s response,” he said.
    Earlier in the day, members of the forum – 'Joggya Sikkhak Sikkhika Adhikar Mancha' (Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum) – took out a rally from Howrah to the state secretariat to meet Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, but they were stopped midway by the police.
    The protesting teachers have been demanding that the state publish the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets of the 2016 School Service Commission examination, along with a complete list of "untainted" candidates, and an unconditional reinstatement of their jobs.
    The Supreme Court had in April annulled the appointment of nearly 26,000 teaching and non-teaching staff in state-run and state-aided schools, after finding the selection process to be tainted.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)