March to Bengal secretariat by non-teaching staff in schools stopped by police

Hundreds of non-teaching staff in schools in West Bengal, who started a march to the state secretariat Nabanna on Tuesday (July 8, 2025) demanding job reinstatement, were stopped by the police three kilometres ahead of their destination, officials said.

Braving inclement weather, the agitating Group C and Group D employees continued with their demonstration, demanding an appointment with the Chief Minister or the state Chief Secretary.

They were stopped under the Bankim Setu, some three kilometres ahead of the state secretariat Nabanna in Howrah, the officials said.

Their demand for an appointment with the CM or the Chief Secretary was rejected.

The appointments of these non-teaching staff were terminated by the Supreme Court in April this year on the grounds of large-scale recruitment corruption by the state School Service Commission (SSC) in 2016.

The agitators claimed that they were at the receiving end of the top court order despite not being identified as ‘tainted’ by the SSC.

“We had submitted a questionnaire to the government on July 3 over the crisis that has resulted in our job loss. We hold the government responsible for our plight. We expect that our Chief Minister or, in her absence, the Chief Secretary will reply to our questions, and we are holding this march to meet them at Nabanna,” said Bikram Poley, spokesperson of the eligible non-teaching staff rights forum.

“The police are now telling us that a representative of the government will meet us at Nabanna, but the CM or the CS won’t be around. We do not accept that. We will continue to agitate here till our demand is met,” he added from the Bankim Setu base where the protestors were stopped.

The protesters began their march from Howrah Maidan in central Howrah and waded through waterlogged streets.

They demanded immediate reinstatement of 3,394 non-teaching staff in schools, who, they claimed, were eligible and non-tainted personnel.

The agitators claimed that they had been rendered jobless for the past four months by the Supreme Court order.

The protesters also demanded that the SSC publish a certified list of all 3,396 employees as eligible and non-tainted.

“We would not have suffered like this had the state government or the SSC segregated the tainted teachers and employees from the untainted ones in court," another protesting employee said.

One of the protesters alleged that they have been without salaries for the past four months because the "government not only indulged in corruption in giving appointments but also failed to do its job in identifying those who did not participate in that scam and secured appointments fairly".

The Supreme Court scrapped the entire 2016 SLST recruitment panel and annulled 25,753 appointments of teachers of classes 9-12, as well as Group C and Group D staff.

The court observed that large-scale corruption had "tainted and vitiated" beyond redemption the entire selection process.

The top court ordered that the SSC must complete its fresh selection for the vacant positions by December 31 this year.

Modifying its earlier order, the court on April 17 allowed only teachers who were identified as untainted to continue teaching in their respective positions till the fresh recruitment process was complete and allowed them to participate in the new selection process afresh but offered no such relief to the non-teaching staff.