Nearly 100 Job Aspirants Detained For Blocking Road In Kolkata

Nearly 100 teaching job aspirants demanding appointment in schools were detained in the Salt Lake area here on Tuesday for blocking a thoroughfare here without informing the authorities, a police officer said.

The protesters claimed to have been deprived of teaching jobs in state-run and state-aided upper primary, secondary and higher secondary schools despite having qualified in the recruitment tests conducted by the School Service Commission (SSC).

The incident happened at Karunamoyee crossing near Bikash Bhavan, the headquarters of the State Education Department.

A police officer said the protesters suddenly blocked the road and started shouting slogans demanding immediate appointment in schools.

All of them were detained when they refused to clear the thoroughfare ignoring requests by the police, he said.

"The protesters did not notify the authorities about their stir and blocked the road around noon. We have reports they had plans to march towards Bikash Bhavan. They were detained and taken into waiting vehicles to the police station and later released," the officer said.

A placard displayed by one of the protestors Pijus Das read, "We are being physically manhandled for raising our rightful demand to get a job."

Meanwhile, the sit-in protests by another 100 SSC candidates, who claim to have qualified in past years but "did not find place in merit lists", continued for 594 days on the side of Mayo Road in the heart of the city.

Former West Bengal Education minister Partha Chatterjee, former SSC Chairman Subiresh Bhattacharya, former SSC advisor Shantiprasad Sinha and former president of West Bengal Board of Secondary Education Kalyanmoy Ganguly are among those arrested by central agencies in connection with the High Court-monitored probe into teacher appointment irregularity scam in state-run and state-aided secondary, and higher secondary schools.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)