West Bengal chief secretary Manoj Pant on Wednesday urged teachers to continue working in their respective schools to ensure that the state's education system does not collapse and asserted that the government would soon file a review petition in the Supreme Court in the context of its order annulling over 25,000 jobs last week.
Referring to clashes between police and teachers outside the district inspector of schools' office at Kasba in Kolkata, Pant appealed to the educators not to get involved in confrontations so that their plan to legally resolve the impasse does not get affected.
"It has come to our notice that teachers were seen attending schools and interacting with students. I would like to congratulate them. I will appeal to them not to get involved in anything that would affect the steps we are planning to take. I would like to assure them that the government is trying to find a solution to the problem legally," Pant added.
"We have already filed a clarificatory petition in which we have requested the SC to allow us to continue with the existing (education) system. We are waiting for the SC's directive. We are trying to find a solution from a humanitarian perspective. We will follow the SC directive to take our next steps," the IAS officer elaborated.
"The state education department is taking steps to comply with the SSC directive. We are concentrating on the 10 points they have given us at the Netaji Indoor Stadium," he said, adding that they will not delay filing it at the Supreme Court.
"Whatever happened at the Kasba DI office is unfortunate. Unnecessarily this situation is being created. We do not want a repetition of any such incident. We can feel their pain and their problems, we understand that they have families and children. We will look at the matter from a humanitarian point of view," he added.
When pointed to an incident of a policeman kicking a teacher, Pant said, "If there is an attack on public property and also on police, then you are bound to take action. Nobody has the right to destroy public property. There they tried to break the lock at the DI office. Law and order have to be controlled and nobody would take law and order into their own hands. As a citizen, everybody is bound by the law."
Talking to reporters, Kolkata police commissioner Manoj Verma, who was present with Pant, said police would facilitate any programme planned by the teachers if they were given prior information.
"We found some teachers trying to enter the DI office and then the situation erupted. Six of our policemen were injured. I will appeal to teachers to inform us what they want. We will facilitate that. Police are not against anybody. Today, police were compelled to take action when they were attacked and some of them were injured," Verma said.
The IPS officer said they had "no prior intimation about today's programme (teachers going to the DI office)."
Verma agreed to the fact that the policeman's kicking one teacher was "absolutely not desirable."
He went on to say only a part of the footage was telecast on news channels and people should also see what compelled the policeman to get into that act. He said an investigation was initiated.
"I fully agree that this is absolutely not desirable. We are looking into the footage. Our senior officer is probing the matter. Only one portion of the footage was being shown on television channels. I think we must see the entire visual. All these things are not desirable," he said.
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