Kolkata, Apr 22 (UNI) Tension ran high on Tuesday as hundreds of dismissed government teachers laid a siege to the West Bengal School Service Commission headquarters at Salt Lake and surrounded SSC chief Siddhartha Majumdar and others on Monday demanding publication of the lists of eligible and tainted candidates of the 2016 panel of teachers.

The police reinforced their forces around the SSC office even as the protesting teachers refused to move away and continued with the protest until the SSC accepted their demands.

The protesters, however, allowed the people who are taking water and medicines and essentials to the SSC chairman and other staff in the Achariya Sadan. Senior commission officials were inside, with the protesters determined not to let them leave.

The SSC late on Monday said I a statement that it would follow the Supreme Court order.

State education minister Bratya Basu said the SSC had already announced its intention to maintain the apex court order. He also advised the eligible teachers to wait until the state moves the court with a review petition.

The Supreme Court early this month upheld the Calcutta High order cancelling the entire 2016 panel of teachers and Group C and Group D staff after the SSC failed to provide the list of qualified and tainted candidates despite repeated requests.

Former Calcutta high court justice Abhijit Gangopadhya said there was no such order from the apex court to issue a list of eligible and tainted candidates.

The former judge, who is a BJP Lok Sabha member from Tamluk, had ordered the cancellation of some 6000 candidates but the state had challenged in the Supreme Court, which cancelled the entire panel of 2016 recruitment of about 26,000 teachers and non-teachers.

Meanwhile, the junior doctors’ forum that led the protests after the rape and murder at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital last year pledged support to the aggrieved teachers.

The SSC had conducted 12 rounds of counseling to appoint teachers for classes IX to XII following the 2016 state-level selection test. But the fourth and subsequent rounds of counseling took place after the panel of candidates completed its term of one year.

According to the SSC norms, a panel is valid for up to a year. The first three rounds of counselling were held between December 2017 and August 2018.

Meanwhile, some of the protestors fell sick owing to dehydration and absence of sufficient drinking water and refreshment facilities in the vicinity

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