Teachers in Patna were baton-charged on Saturday after they protested against the Bihar government’s decision to allow those from other states to apply for jobs, reported PTI.

On June 27, the Nitish Kumar-led government removed a condition according to which only those with domicile status in Bihar could apply for posts of teachers – with the exception of Classes 6 to 8, reported The Indian Express.

However, Bihar Teachers Eligibility Test Association president Amit Vikram said that there was “no immediate provocation” for the government to do away with the clause in the middle of the appointment process. “The government wants the process to be delayed as it does not intend to appoint teachers,” he claimed.

On Saturday, about 3,000 teachers and job aspirants took part in a march from the Gandhi Maidan in Patna to the Raj Bhavan, when they were stopped by the police. Some of the protestors were later baton-charged.

Deputy Superintendent of Police, Law and Order, Patna, Nurul Haq, claimed that the demonstration was staged without permission from the administration.

The decision to scrap the domicile condition for teaching posts has been the subject of the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party as well as the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, which supports the coalition government.

The saffron party announced that it will hold a march to the Vidhan Sabha on July 13, during the state Assembly’s monsoon session, to support the demand of the protestors.

“The way state’s students are being treated shows that the Nitish Kumar government is oppressive,” Bihar BJP chief Samrat Choudhary told PTI. “It is unfortunate that the state government is saying that Bihari students are not talented.”

Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation’s MLA Sandeep Saurav said that the state government should have consulted the teachers and other stakeholders before making the changes to the recruitment process.

Teachers baton-charged in Punjab

In Punjab’s Sangrur district as well, contractual teachers were baton-charged as they led a protest march towards Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s house demanding the regularisation of their services, reported the Hindustan Times.

The teachers claimed that the government gave them only a marginal increment even as it announced that it had regularised 14,239 contractual teachers and other employees.

“We don’t want an increment in our salaries,” Union president Manpreet Singh told the newspaper. “We want regular pay scale and regularisation of our services. Therefore, we have rejected this increment.”

Commenting on the baton-charging of the protestors, Shiromani Akali Dal MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal alleged that the Punjab government was “treating unarmed protesting teachers as rioters”.