UP Teacher Recruitment Scam: Youth Agitating for Nearly 500 Days in the Hope of Justice

The BJP government at the Center is about to complete 10 years. This is the second term of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh. Still, the list of promises like jobs remains just mere words. The youth of Uttar Pradesh, believing the words of the leaders to be true, are spending money on coaching, staying away from home, and becoming over-aged, but till now, not even 1% of the promises made to them have been fulfilled. 

The story concerns around 6 lakh vacant posts in primary education recruitment, LTs and police. For the last several years, the Yuva Manch State Executive has been demanding the restoration of these posts, but the government continues to ignore their demands. Once again, when a three-day special session of the Assembly has been called in the state before the Lok Sabha elections, hope has arisen among the youth that their views might be raised in the House.

To convey its demands to the Assembly, a meeting of the Yuva Manch State Executive was held, which discussed mobilising around the issue of employment through social media. A movement was also called for in the first week of December.

At present, Yuva Manch has started a campaign on social media over the issue of employment, in which it has been demanded that in the Assembly session, the government should give assurance of fulfilling the election promise of filling 6 lakh vacant posts. Yuva Manch has also condemned the lathicharge on teacher recruitment candidates.

Rajesh Sachan, a member of the central team of the Samyukta Yuva Morcha and Yuva Manch convenor, said that the government is not serious about the election promise of filling 6 lakh vacant posts and solving the growing problem of unemployment. 

"It is the constitutional responsibility of the government to ensure dignified employment, and it is the democratic right of the youth to peacefully raise their voice for employment rights, but the government is bent on crushing peaceful movements."

A very touching video of the candidates going viral on social media shows them holding the legs of the police officers and asking for help.

According to one of the news websites, Yuva Manch President Anil Singh accused the Yogi government of not being serious about the formation of the Education Service Selection Commission. Singh said that when it took over three months to approve the rules, it was certain that the government would take more time to appoint the Chairman and the members of the Commission. 

Singh appealed to Adityanath to complete the pending recruitments, including declaring the exam date by including all the vacant 25,000 posts in TGT-PGT 2022 before the implementation of the code of conduct. Other demands include appointing LTs, primary teachers and police officers. 

CPI (ML) appealed to provide speedy justice to the candidates who were victims of reservation scams in 69,000 teacher recruitments.

The victims of the reservation scam were protesting in the Eco Garden of Lucknow for the last several months, but when the administration did not pay any attention, they came to the gate of the Eco Garden. In support of these candidates, CPI (ML) accused the government of blaming its mistakes on the candidates and alleged that the BJP government wants to abolish SC-OBC reservation.

Vijay Kumar, leading the ongoing movement in Lucknow's Eco Garden for more than 526 days, spoke to NewsClick. 

"We are all candidates for 69,000 teacher recruitments. It has been more than 526 days. We are forced to agitate in Eco Garden. Our only demand is that the government listen to the National Backward Commission. The Commission's report on April 29, 2021, accepted that there was a reservation scam in the recruitment of 69,000 teachers and sent a letter to the UP government. In its letter, it said that the candidates affected by the scam should be given appointment letters. Action should be taken against those who are guilty. There has been no hearing on it; then we agitated for a year to get the report implemented. After this, we continuously agitated. On December 23, 2021, the Chief Minister called our five-member delegation to meet and talk about giving justice to us. He directed the officers to do justice as soon as possible. In compliance with this, the officials released the list of 6,800 reserved category candidates on January 5, 2022. These people were affected by the scam and could not be selected due to the discrepancy. But to date, the appointment letter has not been released."

He further said, "We also met Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, which was very disappointing. He asked us the names of our castes."

Vijay Kumar said that one of his friends uses the Singh surname. Maurya allegedly scolded that friend and asked him if he was a Thakur. The friend replied no to that question and said he was a Patel. 

"We were discriminated against based on our castes."

Before the Assembly session, the candidate agitating about the 69,000 teacher recruitment scam had requested former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Akhilesh Yadav to raise his voice in the Assembly.

For now, it remains to be seen how the opposition presents its views to the government in the Assembly regarding this scam and to what extent the government will move forward to provide justice to these candidates.