A group of candidates who had written the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) in 2015 for recruitment in primary schools but whose names did not appear in a panel drawn up in order of scores after interview have been blocking an arterial road in Salt Lake since Monday.
The protesters, who are blocking the main artery from Karunamoyee to Sector V and New Town, have been demanding that they be recruited without having to appear in yet another interview.
The state primary education board, headquartered in Salt Lake’s Karunamoyee, will start registration for the interview on October 21.
Gautam Paul, the president of an ad hoc committee set up by the government to run the board, said on Tuesday that a candidate would not be recruited unless he or she appeared in the interview.
The protesting candidates are alleging that recruitments — which are supposed to be based on a combination of parameters, including scores in TET and interview — were made in a unfair way during the tenure of the previous board president Manik Bhattacharya.
Bhattacharya was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate last week on charges of corruption in recruitment.
Some protesters expressed the fear that they might lose out to those who wrote the TET 2021 during the interview because, they say, candidates in the latest TET-qualified batch have better scores than them in the board exams.
There is also a concern that many candidates won’t be able to appear in the interview because they have crossed 40.
Achintya Prasad Samanta, among the protesters blocking the road, had appeared in interviews twice since writing the TET in 2015. He failed to make it to the panel from which 13,300-odd candidates have been recruited over the past two years.
He alleged that the primary education board had earlier never came up with details of the marks in the different stages of the screening, including TET, interview and board exams.
“The details would have exposed the unfair manner of recruitment made during the tenure of Manik Bhattacharya as president of the primary education board,” said Samanta, from Hooghly district.
“We did not get jobs because someone indulged in corruption while recruiting teachers and now we are being told to appear in yet another interview. We won’t”.
The board had last month appointed 185 teachers from among the candidates who had written the TET in 2015 following addition of marks after the board admitted mistakes in some questions.
The board had then uploaded on its website the merit list featuring scores of the candidates in each stage of the screening.
“This newly introduced practice made it clear what was the basis of appointment. But when the 13,300-odd teachers were appointed during the pandemic, the board did not announce the marks details,” said another candidate.
The protesters met Paul on Tuesday.
After the meeting, Paul said: “Allowing the protesting candidates to get appointed skipping the interview will be in violation of the law. The board will not accept this demand.”