Teachers clash with cops as Bengal fails to publish list of the 'untainted'

KOLKATA: West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) 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 SSC has devised a new “cut-off” to separate the “tainted” from the “untainted”: only the first three of the 12 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 “untainted” teachers.

This led to a day-long stand-off, with protesters barricading the SSC office with its chairman, Siddhartha Majumder , inside.

There were intermittent clashes with police and, at one point in the evening, protesters even refused to let food meant for Majumder and other officials taken in.

Thirteen representatives from the ranks of the protesting teachers learned about the new development when they met Majumder on Monday evening.