After ‘classroom detention', cops at teacher's home at dawn
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Bathinda: Ten days after a police team sat in a pre-primary classroom to stop a teacher from taking part in a protest in Ludhiana, 150km away, police again showed up at her residence at 5am on Thursday.
They stayed put for nearly three hours, trying to prevent teacher Veerpal Kaur Sidhana from even leaving for school so that she wouldn't take part in a protest. "Is this the independence our freedom fighters gave up their lives for," she asked.
Veerpal Kaur heads the 'Shaheed Kiranjit Kaur Pre- Primary Associate Adhyapak Union Punjab', which has given the call to reach Faridkot on Independence Day to ask chief minister Bhagwant Mann about regularisation of their services when he arrives to unfurl the Tricolour.
"We are raising our voice for regularisation of services and to seek every facility that regular teachers get. On Aug 4 police stopped me in my tiny tots' classroom on Aug 4, and today they tried to stop me from going to school. A team had landed up outside my home around 5am. When I stepped out with my husband at 7.50am to go to school, police stopped me. After my repeated insistence on going to school, police spoke with senior officers and allowed me to go," Veerpal Kaur said.
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"When we want to ask questions, we are being stopped or even put under house arrest. Is this the independence for which our freedom fighters made supreme sacrifices?" she asked.
Asked about this, Bathinda senior SP Amneet Kondal said, "Police went to the residence of Veerpal Kaur only to get certain inputs not to stop her from going to school."
What was the need to go to her house at 5am, wonder activists.
Ahead of Independence Day, qualified unemployed activists affiliated to Berojgar Sanjha Morcha, comprising five organisations including unemployed BEd graduates, were either put under house arrest or stopped from going to Sangrur to start a morcha near the residence of CM Mann and Faridkot where Mann is to unfurl National Flag on Friday.
Two activists — Gurpreet Singh and Manish Fazilka — climbed atop a water tank at Sandhwan village, the native village of Punjab assembly speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan in district Faridkot, as a mark of protest.
Under its campaign Yudh Berojgari Virudh (war against unemployment), the Sanjha Morcha has demanded filling the vacant posts of master cadre, lecturers and assistant professors. They also demand scrapping the clause of 55% marks for master cadre, provide age relaxation to overage unemployed, re-issue advertisements for ads for various posts that were withdrawn, said morcha leaders Harjinder Singh and Sukhwinder Dhilwan.
"Some of our activists have been put under house arrest as we are being stopped from reaching Sangrur to start pucca morcha," Harjinder Singh said.
On Aug 4, three cops in uniform remained in the class of the pre-primary wing of the govt middle school at Bathinda for 6 hours from 8am to closing of the school at 2pm, not even caring that the 3-to 6-year-old kids may get scared. Their aim was to prevent Veerpal Kaur Sidhana from joining a protest in Ludhiana.
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