Activists of Left student organisations, including the SFI and the DYFI, marched to the headquarters of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation on Thursday.

The activists, who were demanding immediate filling up of 29,000 posts lying vacant in the corporation, were stopped by police by setting up barricades. The activists led by DYFI leader Minakshi Mukherjee, however, breached the barricades and reached the gate of the CMC headquarters where they staged a sit-in protest.

A scuffle ensued between the two sides as the police tried to resist the protesters from moving ahead. Mukherjee and the protesters sat down on the road.

They refused to move from the road near the corporation building on S.N. Banerjee Road in central Calcutta till the police allowed them to meet corporation officials.

Mukherjee said there would be a bigger protest by Left organisations on issues of unemployment on September 2. DYFI leader Kalatan Dasgupta said their demand included the corporation restarting all schools run by the CMC. He said post-pandemic the CMC had shut down several schools and it had hit students from economically backward sections of the society.