Anindita Bera wrote the state-level selection test (SLST) in November 2016 for the job of an English teacher. She ranked 121 but someone way below on the list allegedly took her job.
Priyanka Shaw, who was No. 3 on the waiting list after writing the same test, also said the school service commission had appointed some of those who ranked below her.
The persistence of teacher-job aspirants like these two and their unwavering lawyer resulted in a breakthrough in the investigations into the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff in government-aided schools.
Hundreds of candidates like these two have been protesting on the streets of Calcutta for several months. Shaw, a resident of Dhakuria, has been attending the protest, sometimes with her six-year-old daughter, over the past 493 days. .
The aggrieved candidates demonstrated regularly from 10am to 5pm at the Gandhi Statue on the Maidan.
The news of the arrest of former education minister Partha Chatterjee, during whose tenure the selection tests were conducted, proved that their fight for fairness in recruitment was “justified”, Priyanka said.
“The fact that over Rs 20 crore has been recovered from one of the minister’s close associates proves that appointments were made in lieu of money...,” Shaw told this newspaper on Saturday.
“This also proves that our fight...was justified.”
Many like Shaw demanded on Saturday that all those who got their jobs illegally should be stripped of their posts.
“Like the appointment of Ankita Adhikary, daughter of minister of state for education Paresh Adhikary, has been struck down, similar treatment must be meted out to all the undeserving appointees,” said a young man at the protest venue.
Anindita Bera, a resident of Harianvi, has visited the protest site on the Maidan several times.
She has been pursuing the case since March, after it emerged during the hearing of another case that someone who ranked lower than her on the merit list, was appointed in a school in Naihati in North 24-Parganas.
“...I came to know that I too was denied an appointment,” said Bera, who wrote the test for a job at the secondary level.
Calcutta’s former mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, who has been fighting multiple cases against the alleged irregularities since 2018, said: “The arrest shows Chatterjee, during his seven-year tenure as the education minister from 2014, institutionalised corrupt practices.”
Bhattacharyya and his team — lawyers Sudipto Dasgupta, Bikram Banerjee and Firdous Shamim — fought the cases on behalf of the aggrieved candidates over the past four years. Dasgupta said they fought over 30 cases in different benches and did not charge any fee but only the litigation cost.