Polytechnic students to hold human chain in front of High Court Sunday

The protests organised by the students of the country’s polytechnic institutes show no signs of abatement. Demanding withdrawal of a writ petition concerning the ‘craft instructors’, students from all the polytechnic institutes in Dhaka will be holding a human chain and sit-in protest in front of the High Court tomorrow, Sunday.

Ramzan Ali, an executive member of the platform ‘Karigori Chhatra Andolan’, shared this with Prothom Alo. He added that, students in all the polytechnic institutes across the country will also observe peaceful human chain and demonstration programmes simultaneously at their respective campuses.

Students of polytechnic institutes have been staging demonstrations with a six-point demand for quite some time now. Their protest programmes included road ‘shutdown’ as well as highway and railway ‘blockade’.

The first of the six-point demand announced by the polytechnic students is cancellation of 30 per cent quota of craft instructors for promotion to junior instructor position.

It also includes annulment of the High Court’s verdict on craft instructors’ promotion to junior instructor position, change of craft instructors’ designation, dismissal of those involved in the court case, annulment of the appointment of craft instructors recruited in 2021, and immediate correction of that disputed recruitment regulation.

Notably, craft instructor Md Ashiq Miah and several others filed a writ petition in the High Court last year challenging two specific sections, serial no. 27 and 28, of the Non-Cadre Gazetted Officers and Non-Gazetted Employees Recruitment Rules 2020 under the Directorate of Technical Education and its affiliated institutions for there being no provision for promotion.