THIRUVANANTHAPURAM (The Thursday Times) — Police in the Indian state of Kerala forcibly removed a teacher on the 16th day of her hunger strike from a protest site outside the state Secretariat on Wednesday night and took down the protesters’ shed and boards, according to visuals from the site and accounts from protesters and police.
Valarmathi, the secretary of the All Kerala Lower Primary School Teachers (LPST) Rankholders Association, was carried away on a stretcher by women police officers after she refused to move. “Do not take me away, the government should take action,” she could be heard saying in visuals from the site.
Police said she was moved to the General Hospital only because doctors had warned that her life could be at risk if her fast continued. “She was not arrested or detained,” said Satheesh Kumar S, the station house officer of the Cantonment police.
A protest moved, not ended
Hours earlier, police had served the protesters a notice to remove their shed and boards from the footpath in front of the Secretariat, accusing them of encroachment, and told them a case had been registered. Valarmathi said the cases and the move to take down the sheds were “simply aimed at sabotaging the protest”.
Within an hour of the action, workers of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of the opposition Communist Party of India (Marxist), set up a new shed in front of the Secretariat after a heated argument with a senior police officer. Another rank holder, M Jayakrishnan, began a fast-until-death there on the same demands. Police and DYFI workers also clashed when officers tried to take down a DYFI board criticising Chief Minister V D Satheesan.
Senior CPI(M) leaders P K Biju and C S Sujatha visited the protesters, and the Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, also expressed solidarity.
What the teachers want
The rank holders have been protesting for months. They want appointments to schools to be made from the rank list that the Kerala Public Service Commission published in May 2025, and the teacher-to-student ratio in primary schools cut from 1:30 to 1:25.
There was no immediate response from the state government to the protesters’ demands.
