Hill plea to defer SSC exams

Kalimpong, July 10: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha will ask its frontal organisation of teachers to write to the chairperson of the School Service Commission requesting him to defer the exams scheduled for July 29 as it will clash with the GTA polls.

“We will discuss the matter with the JSTO (Janmukti Secondary Teachers’ Organisation) and ask them to write to the WBSSC chairman requesting him to postpone the test in the interest of the candidates from the hills,” Morcha spokesperson Harka Bahadur Chhetri told The Telegraph.

Over seven lakh candidates from across the state would write the SSC exams this year for 55,000 posts of assistant teachers in government-aided schools. The exact number of examinees from the hills is not known, officials said.

The SSC has been lying defunct in the hills for almost 10 years after it stopped functioning during the GNLF regime.

Hill candidates who want to take the SSC tests have to fill up forms in other parts of the state.

“I have applied from Siliguri and I have friends who have applied from different districts in the state. If the examination is held on the scheduled date, I will have no choice but to sit for it since it is about my future. But the GTA is about our collective future and I definitely want to exercise my franchise. The SSC exam has been postponed twice before and I am ready for another postponement,” said D.K. Tamang, a resident of Kalimpong.

The SSC exam was originally scheduled for June 3 but it was deferred to July 22 and finally to July 29.

“I have spoken to the MLAs from Kalimpong, Kurseong and Darjeeling districts several times and none of them raised the demand for postponing the exam. The dates cannot be changed as the government will have to complete the process of recruiting assistant teachers for filling up 55,000 vacancies before December 31,” said SSC chairman Chittaranjan Mondal.