Bihar: Teaching Job Aspirants' Protest Lathi-charged by Police

Patna: Ignoring extreme weather, hundreds of school teacher job aspirants across Bihar took to the streets and staged a protest in Patna, demanding their much-awaited recruitment by the state government. Police forcibly stopped protesters; when the latter tried to cross barricades, it led to clashes with the police clashing with police. Few protesters sustained injuries in the clashes.

Most of the protesting teacher aspirants who have passed the Bihar Teachers Eligibility Test (BTET) and Central Teachers Eligibility Test(CTET) demanded the government include them in the process of selecting teachers in the government-run school. It is an old demand as they have been staging dharna in Patna for the last 22 days to pressure the government.

This is the first such protest witnessed in the state after the Janata-Dal United (JD-U) leader Nitish Kumar dumped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), joined hands with the Mahagathbandhan and formed the new government in the state ten days ago.

With placards, banners and national flags in their hands, job aspirants took out a protest march in the heart of Patna, disrupting traffic for hours on busy roads here. The protesters shouted slogans against the new education minister for not giving a clear-cut assurance to fulfil their demand.

Bihar education minister Chandrasekhar has reportedly asked protesters to give him some time to look into their demands.

A video clip went viral on social media minutes after the protest that exposed the high-handedness of authorities in dealing with the protesters. It was shown that a protester with the national flag in his hand was mercilessly beaten by an ADM rank officer when he fell on the ground.

Ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav said the incident was unfortunate. He has asked Patna DM to set up an enquiry team to investigate and take action against the guilty officer.

Yadav said several job aspirants met him last week. He assured them that providing jobs is among his top agendas, and they did not need to protest on the streets.

"We are eligible for a teacher job as we had passed either BTET or CTET, but the government has been delaying and not including our candidature for the selection. This is a big injustice to jobless youth like us. We will not sit silent, and we will protest peacefully to force the government to recruit us as teachers," Hemant Kumar, one of the protesters, said.

Aniket Prasad, another protester, said the police action against job aspirants was improper.

"Police have beaten protesters and injured many of us for demanding jobs."

Hemant Kumar and Prasad expressed their displeasure over the government's failure to provide them jobs despite their qualifications.

Opposition BJP, which was in power till August 10, attacked the state government for police lathi-charge against protesters. BJP leaders reminded the government of its promise to provide 20 lakh jobs to youths in the state.