A group of teachers, who lost their jobs due to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment scam, visited the residence of former India cricket captain Sourav Ganguly on Thursday to invite him to join their protest march to the state secretariat, Nabanna, on April 21.
However, the police intervened before the teachers could meet Ganguly, taking them to the Thakurpukur police station "to discuss procedural issues" regarding the invitation.
The teachers, who belong to the platform Chakrihara Oikyamanch, had issued a call for a rally to Nabanna, demanding that the Mamata Banerjee-led government take immediate steps to reinstate the jobs of “untainted” candidates through a legal submission to the Supreme Court.
The protest follows the court’s decision to scrap the entire recruitment panel of 2016, which had employed around 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff in state-sponsored and -aided schools.
The jobless teachers said they approached Ganguly, a popular figure and an icon, in hopes that his intervention would lead to a dialogue with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
One of the teachers, speaking near Ganguly’s residence in Behala, South Kolkata, said, “We wanted to go to the residence of Sourav Ganguly, who is a popular figure and an icon, to intervene so that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee holds talks with us. We wanted to meet Dada (Sourav) and invite him to our rally. We are carrying an invite for him.”
However, when the teachers were asked to hand over the invitation to Ganguly’s office staff, they insisted on meeting him personally.
Police soon arrived at the scene and escorted the three teachers to the local police station, stating that invitations could not be delivered to Ganguly without a prior appointment.
When asked about the invitation, Ganguly reportedly told the teachers, “Please don’t involve me in politics.”
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