Kolkata, Apr 24 (PTI) Around 1,000 protesting teachers, who have laid siege to the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) headquarters here, continued their sit-in for the fourth day on Thursday.

The agitators, who launched the demonstration on April 21, vowed that their sit-in would continue till they were officially reinstated on a permanent basis in their respective educational institutions.

One of the office-bearers of Deserving Teachers Forum, Chinmoy Mandal, told PTI, “We will not withdraw our agitation till the state presents the full list of tainted/untainted candidates before the Supreme Court by moving a review appeal and we are reinstated till we attain 60 years of age, not up to December 31 as recently ordered by the Supreme Court.” “We will not withdraw till we get written assurances that the eligible teachers won’t have to sit for a fresh round of SSC recruitment test after May 30 and are permanently reinstated with their heads held high,” Mondal added.

Mondal said another group of teaching and non-teaching staff, who were illegally appointed despite failing to qualify in the 2016 SSC exams, assembled in Karunamoyee area and shouted slogans against the ‘eligible’ teachers.

However, there was no untoward incident as police were present.

The agitating teachers on Wednesday allowed SSC chairman Siddhartha Majumdar to leave the commission office after confining him for over 40 hours to press for their demands, which included publication of OMR sheets by April 21 on WBSSC website.

They let Majumdar go as he had to appear before the Calcutta High Court on April 23 in connection with a hearing related to the presentation of OMR sheets of the 2016 SSC recruitment test.

“Our sit-in will continue as usual…Majumdar will again be gheraoed once he returns to his office,” Mondal said.

Another forum leader Dhritish Mondal claimed that the list of ‘untainted’ teachers sent to the offices of district inspectors of schools (DI) did not include the names of 10-11 members of the forum, all deserving teachers.

He also said the SSC chairman told them that it was a technical error and a fresh list with these 10-11 omitted names would be sent in a day or two.

The protesting ‘eligible’ teachers, who are part of the 26,000 who were rendered jobless following the April 3 Supreme Court order, also demanded immediate termination of the over 1,000 candidates of the 2016 SSC Recruitment Exams, who were found to be ‘tainted’.

Around 2,000 jobless teachers initially launched the indefinite sit-in before the SSC headquarters on April 21, the day the commission promised to upload the list of ‘tainted’ and eligible candidates for the 2016 examinations but could not, citing legal issues.

A delegation of the protesting teachers met the SSC chairman on Tuesday and held a discussion, which they termed “partially satisfactory”.

“We are partially satisfied with the list of 17,206 teachers of whom 15,403 are eligible as confirmed by SSC,” spokesperson of the Deserving Teachers Forum, Chinmoy Mondal had earlier told reporters.

Altogether 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff of state-aided schools lost their jobs after the apex court found large-scale irregularities in the 2016 recruitment process and scrapped the entire panel.

The Supreme Court, on April 17, extended till December 31 the services of terminated teachers found ‘untainted’ by the CBI, but left out the non-teaching staff. PTI SUS MNB