KOLKATA: Hundreds of people who lost their jobs as teaching and non-teaching staffers in West Bengal government-run and aided schools queued up at the Netaji Indoor Stadium here on Monday for a meeting with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.Chaos prevailed outside the stadium as people who had not been issued entry passes also arrived at the venue to attend the programme.Police officers, present in large numbers, had a tough time pacifying the assembled people who wanted to enter the indoor stadium to be present at the meeting.Outside the meeting venue, a teaching staff member, Akhtar Ali, said that those who are in the institutions and have committed fraud should be put in jail.”Why punish us when we have passed the examination, given interviews, and then been selected? Why did such a big fraud happen to us?” he said.Meanwhile, another teacher hoped that CM Mamata Banerjee would understand their pain.”We hope that she will understand the pain of us–almost 19,000 untainted people. We lost in the High Court but moved to the Supreme Court with the hope that we would win, but sadly, the judgment was not in our favour. We are trapped in this scam, and we are the collateral damage. We will not appear for the re-examination, and why should we? As per the order, the tainted (employees) have been asked to pay back whatever they have earned as salary with interest in the last six months,” she said.Outside the venue of the meeting, a teacher Yasmin Parveen said that he had hopes from the West Bengal CM.”We have hopes from the CM. We fulfilled all the procedures to get the job. After being employed for seven years, we are now unemployed. We need nothing but our jobs back,” Parveen said.
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