India News | West Bengal's Edu Minister Meets Protesting School Jobs Aspirants

Kolkata, Aug 17 (PTI) West Bengal Education Minister Bratya Basu on Wednesday met the protesting aspirants for school teacher jobs and assured them of justice.

After the meeting with a six-member delegation of Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) aspirants at his office in Bikash Bhaban, Basu said he was hopeful that their issues will be resolved soon.

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"The meeting was fruitful. The government will act according to the court's verdict. But this time, we hope the issues will be resolved very soon," he said.

"Mentioning any particular date means putting pressure on us. As you can see, we are now holding discussions. The government will take steps regarding recruitment as soon as possible," he told reporters, without giving any timeline for starting the hiring process.

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A member of the delegation said they will wait for the government to announce the date regarding the commencement of the recruitment process.

Earlier, Basu held two meetings with the protesting School Service Commission (SSC) job aspirants.

The protesters have been staging demonstrations for over 500 days at Mayo Road in central Kolkata, alleging irregularities in the earlier recruitment drives by the SSC.

Basu had announced on August 8 that the state would start the recruitment process of 21,000 teachers at upper primary, secondary, and higher secondary levels within a stipulated time, possibly by Durga Puja in October.

On the direction of the Calcutta High Court, the CBI is probing alleged anomalies in the recruitment of Group-C and Group-D staff, as well as teachers in government-sponsored and aided schools.

The Enforcement Directorate last month arrested Partha Chatterjee, who was the education minister when the alleged irregularities took place.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)