The “deserving” schoolteachers holding a sit-in at Esplanade since Saturday night have threatened a fast unto death if their problems are not addressed by the first week of May.

They have announced a relay fast from May 1 to 7.

“If the impasse is still not resolved, we will hold a fast unto death. After losing our rightfully earned jobs, we don’t have any other option,” said Chinmoy Mandal, a spokesperson for the Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum, the platform spearheadingthe protest.

The Forum’s indefinite sit-in at the Y-channel is in protest at the “unjust” sacking of 25,753 school staff by the Supreme Court, which did not spare the “not specifically tainted” and said the entire recruitment process was “vitiated”.

The Forum has also decided to take its protest to Jantar Mantar in Delhi.

A bus with 75 protesters will set off from the Y-channel on Monday and reach Delhi on Wednesday.

“We will hold the (Jantar Mantar) protest from 2pm to 5pm (on April 16),” Mehboob Mandal, another Forum spokesperson, said.

The Jantar Mantar protest will come a day before the Supreme Court hears the Bengal secondary education board’s plea to allow the sacked staff to continue till the completion of a fresh recruitment drive or the academic year, whichever is earlier, an education department official said.

The Forum said it had lined up a series of protest programmes. It has invited former judges and lawyers to the protest site on Monday -- which happens to be B.R. Ambedkar’s birthday --- to discuss the legal issues involving the sacked school employees’ case.

“The father of the Constitution believed in equality and justice. We want to know from the legal experts why we were denied justice when the school service commission submitted a figure about the tainted candidates (thereby marking them out) based on a CBI probe,” a sacked teacher and Forum member said.

He underlined that the Supreme Court order cancelling the school staff’s appointments did draw a distinction between the tainted and the “not specifically tainted” – by directing those found tainted to return the salaries they had drawn.

“This means they view the remaining employees, who have not been asked to return their salaries, as untainted,” the sacked teacher said.

“If so, why did the apex court order en masse termination? We want to know this from the former judges and the lawyers.”

The teachers iterated that they would continue the protest till the crisis they were facing was legally alleviated.

The teachers have urged people working in schools, colleges, universities and government offices to wear black badges inscribed with the text “We are deserving” on April 17.

“Through such moves we want to build public opinion about the injustice meted out to us,” Mehboob said.

This will be followed by a mass signature campaign. After that, the aggrieved teachers will march to Raj Bhavan from Sealdah on April 22.

“We want governor C.V. Ananda Bose to take our case up with President Droupadi Murmu,” Mehboob said.

“The leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, has already approached the President, seeking her intervention. We want our governor to play a proactive role to end the