TEACHERS, POLICE COME FACE-TO-FACE OUTSIDE PUNJAB CM’S RESIDENCE

Naresh Kumar/Sangrur

Members of the Punjab Special Cadre Teachers Front on Saturday staged a protest outside Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s residence here, alleging that the state government had failed to fulfil its promises.

The protest turned tense as the agitating teachers and police personnel came face-to-face, with pushing and shoving reported when the protesters attempted to move towards the Chief Minister’s residence.

The police stopped the protesters from proceeding further. According to the organisers, around 250 teachers participated in the demonstration, while the police deployment was estimated at nearly 500 personnel.

The protesting teachers raised slogans against the government and accused it of reneging on assurances given to them.
They said that when the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was in opposition, its leaders used to visit their protests and assure them that their genuine demands would be fulfilled within the first year of forming the government.
The teachers alleged that the present government was adopting an even more stringent approach than previous governments. They claimed that whenever they came to meet political leaders over their demands, the police tried to stop them and pushed them back.

“Why is the government avoiding questions?”

The protesters questioned the AAP government’s claim of being a government of the common people, asking why it was now allegedly avoiding questions raised by ordinary citizens.

They said the party had earlier maintained that people should question the government, but when they were now raising questions about their pending demands, the government was allegedly “running away” from them.
The Special Cadre Teachers Front has been campaigning for its demands for a long time.

The teachers’ key demands include equal pay for equal work, extending all benefits available to regular teachers to special cadre teachers and implementation of the applicable pay scale, the protesters said.