Kolkata: With a glimmer of hope to get employed as a teacher, Heena Tabassum sat for the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) conducted on Sunday with her two-month-old child.
This is her second time sitting for the test. She had earlier cracked her way to the interview but failed to clear it in 2010-11. However, it did not seem to have diminished her hope to get a job as a teacher.
“I am in need of a job. I will sit for it repeatedly if need be,” 35-year-old Heena said while leaving the centre.
Heena is from the Garden Reach area. She had to bring her child to the centre to be able to feed her. Heena said that she was allotted a separate room to appear for the test while the women staff at the centre took care of her baby.
“I faced no problem while giving the test. Everything passed smoothly,” Heena said. More than three lakh candidates appeared for the test across 773 centres of which, around 2000 candidates appeared across five centres in Kolkata district.
In a Press conference conducted by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE), it was informed that the test was conducted peacefully and transparently.
Meanwhile, at Jadavpur Vidyapith two men were seen distributing Bhagavad Gita to the candidates while saying: “Take one gita as you could not come to the programme because of the test.”
A TET candidate condemned such activity outside a secular space like school. The two men even tried to give Gita to the WBBPE president Gautam Pal when he visited the centre earlier on the same day.
Bhagavad Gita chant programme was organised in Maidan on Sunday. On December 19, the Calcutta High Court had refused to grant the prayer of BJP MP Dilip Ghosh and another student for changing the date of TET.
The writ petition claimed that traffic problems may arise because of the programme while the second petitioner who was a student sought the change so that he could attend the programme.