Teachers at IIEST Shibpur held a protest on Monday against the showcause notices that the authorities have served on some of their colleagues for a march last Wednesday with posters that had “Save IIEST” written on them.
The teachers held an emergency meeting on Monday evening to deliberate on the “Save IIEST initiative”.
After the meeting ended, the teachers stood in the lobby of the main building with a banner that read “Save IIEST. Get What It Deserves”.
They had posters with a message that said: “Save IIEST from the absence of infrastructure, erratic recruitment process and absence of appropriate classrooms and laboratories”.
Tapendu Mandal, the general secretary of the teachers’ association who is among the four teachers who got the showcause notice, said: “We have been showcaused for bringing to the fore our genuine grievances. When repeated communications to the director (Parthasarathi Chakrabarti) about the serious infrastructure lacunas failed to elicit any response, we had to hold the march. The authorities cannot muzzle the voice of protest through an undemocratic order.”
Calls and text messages from this newspaper to the director went unanswered.
Late last Wednesday, four IIEST teachers got a letter from the registrar (Debasish Dutta) that said: “I (registrar) have been directed to seek an explanation from you regarding your alleged involvement in displaying banners outside Gate No. 1 & 2 in the evening....”
The order which the letter refers to was issued on February 7, 2020, days after students and teachers of the institute had held a rally against the Centre’s proposed citizenship matrix.
The protesting teachers said although nine years have passed since the Bengal Engineering and Science University had been upgraded to the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), a Union education ministry-run institute, the infrastructure has not improved a bit.