Traffic was disrupted at the Exide crossing and on Camac Street for around 45minutes on Wednesday afternoon when job aspirants who claimed they had cleared the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) 2014 and were still unemployed blocked the thoroughfares. They blocked the way of the vehicles and demanded recruitment in government-aided schools.
Police said traffic had to be diverted from the Park Circus seven-point crossing, Beck Bagan, Ballygunge Circular Road, Chowringhee Road and the Birla Planetarium crossing. Traffic on AJC Bose Road, Sarat Bose Road, Camac Street and Chowringhee Road was the worst affected.
Several hundreds of men and women had blocked AJC Bose Road at the Exide crossing protesting alleged irregularities in the teacher recruitment process in government-aided schools.
Once they were removed from the Exide crossing, the group shifted to Camac Street and staged a demonstration outside the office of Trinamul MP and general secretary of the all-India Trinamul Congress, Abhishek Banerjee.
Traffic was disrupted between 3.15pm and 4pm as the protesters refused to leave and had to be physically dragged to clear the roads and then arrested. One being forced into the police vans, many of the protesters slid under the police vehicles and continued to be there till they were taken out forcibly.
Many of the protesters said that they were the “deserving candidates”.
“We have passed the TET. We deserve government jobs. We are here to exercise our rights,” said one of them.
Police said 282 persons were detained.
A woman protester who was present on the spot alleged that she had been bitten by a woman cop who was trying to handle the crowd.
The job aspirant alleged that she was bitten on her arm and in between her fingers. Officers in Lalbazar said they were probing the allegation.
Ghum fest to promote hill railway
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) will organise the second edition of the Ghum Winter Festival from Saturday to popularise the heritage mountain railway among tourists.
“We are organising the festival from November 12 to December 5,” S.K. Choudhury, Northeast Frontier Railway’s Katihar divisional railway manager, said here on Wednesday.
The organisers also unveiled Red Panda, the official mascot of the fest in which a series of events would be held across the Darjeeling hills.
“The idea is to integrate the DHR and the people of the hills so that we can work together for the conservation and the promotion of the mountain railway which is declared as a world heritage site by Unesco,” said Choudhury.
Bireswar Banerjee