3 in a row: Ankita Adhikary, Babita Sarkar, Anamika Roy lose the same job amid West Bengal schools crisis

JALPAIGURI: Anamika Roy had fought tooth-and-nail against the system to get her name enrolled as a teacher. A job that she deserved had been given twice to two different persons earlier, and Roy finally moved court to get the post. On Thursday, however, the Supreme Court verdict came as a bolt from the blue. She had lost her job.



Roy cleared the 2016 SSC exam and got a job after a prolonged legal battle. In 2018, the job was first given to Ankita Adhikary, daughter of Trinamool minister Paresh Adhikary. Ankita joined Mekhliganj HS School as an assistant teacher.

Paresh was yet to defect to Trinamool from Forward Bloc when his daughter got the job even though she did not appear for the SSC. Later, he contested as the party's Cooch Behar candidate in 2019. In 2021, he won the Mekhliganj AC to become the junior education minister. After 42 months, the Calcutta High Court terminated Ankita and appointed Babita Sarkar in her place. Babita, too, had moved Calcutta High Court against Ankita's appointment. Many things changed in between. Paresh was arrested, jailed, and lost his portfolio.

But the court, after another year, terminated Babita and instructed the SSC to appoint Anamika. The court further instructed the SSC authority to absorb Anamika in a school 20 km from her Siliguri home.

The HC in May 2023 not only took the job away from Babita, it also asked her to refund Rs 15.9 lakh - Rs 11 lakh immediately and the remaining, with interest, within the next six months.

Anamika, who, at 21, ranked below Babita on the SSC merit list in 2016, had moved HC, saying that Babita's academic score was wrongly calculated to be 33. It should have been 31. And if she had scored 31, then Anamika would be ahead of her on the SSC merit list.

Accordingly, on Sept 21, 2023, Anamika joined Harihar High School at Ambari in Jalpaiguri's Rajganj block as an assistant teacher of political science.

The Supreme Court's verdict has now changed everything for Anamika. A mother of two, she wondered how to prepare afresh for the SSC exam, which the Supreme Court has instructed to be conducted three months from now.

"After so many years, is it possible for someone to have the same assiduity and hunger? Over the years, I drew my own peripheries and suddenly find myself in a muddle, needing to start afresh," Anamika said.

She blames the state and the SSC for her fate. "They can't shake off their responsibility. If they had cooperated when the case was being heard at the Calcutta HC, things would have been different now. Those who ran the scam are free and we, who toiled to get the job, are suffering. No difference remains between those who are legit and those who are illegal," Anamika told TOI.