Bengal school job case: Subal Soren, one of the protesting 'untainted' teachers', dies

Kolkata, Aug 15 (IANS) Subal Soren, one of the lead faces in the movement by "untainted" teachers in West Bengal against job loss following the Supreme Court's verdict in April, died on Friday.

Soren was also a regular among that group of "untainted" teachers who had been conducting a sit-in demonstration near the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) at Salt Lake in Kolkata for almost the last two months.

A few days ago, Soren (35) fell ill at his residence in Debra, West Midnapore district, and was subsequently admitted to a local hospital.

However, as his condition deteriorated, he was shifted to a hospital near the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in Kolkata earlier this week. All of Soren's battles ended on Friday afternoon, as he breathed his last at the same hospital.

His family members said that despite continuing with the movement with dogged determination, Soren was breaking down from inside, thinking about how he lost his job.

On April 3, a Supreme Court bench comprising then Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar upheld a previous order of the Calcutta High Court that annulled 25,753 school appointments made through the WBSSC.

The Apex Court observed that the panel had to be scrapped entirely due to the authorities' failure to distinguish between "tainted" and "untainted" candidates.

The state government and the WBSSC have since filed review petitions in the Supreme Court seeking reconsideration of the order.

Soren's fellow "untainted" teachers said that Soren's death was a result of the adamant attitude of the state government not to publish separate lists segregating the tainted from the untainted ones.

"Unable to bear the dual strains, the first being the movement and the second because of his tension thinking about his future, he ultimately left us on this day of Independence Day. This is not a normal death. This is a murder committed by the state government," said Mehboob Mondal, another leading face of the movement.

--IANS

src/svn