The state government has promised to publish a list of the “deserving” and the “undeserving” among the sacked school employees if legal counsel permits, representatives of the aggrieved staff said after a meeting with the education minister and top officials of the School Service Commission.

“The SSC has already started the process of preparing the list. It should be published by April 21. That is what we have been told,” Chinmoy Mandal, a member of the Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum, told reporters at Bikash Bhavan after the nearly three-hour meeting on Friday.

Whatever the SSC does will be in keeping with legal advice, he said.

Education minister Bratya Basu echoed him soon afterwards.

“It is possible to come out with a list of the deserving and undeserving candidates. It is also possible to come out with mirror images or scanned images of the OMR sheets,”he said.

“But we have to seek legal counsel before doing anything. In principle, we agree with them (the school employees whose appointments have been cancelled en masse by the Supreme Court).”

The meeting and the assurances came on a day thousands of aggrieved school staff and ordinary citizens walked up to the commission’s office and waited patiently for an outcome.

Asked whether Friday’s meeting had come as a relief, Mandal, representing the job-losers, said: “We will get relief the day we secure a legal victory in theSupreme Court.”

He, however, did say that the meeting was fruitful and the government had “partially agreed” to the job-losers’ demands.

The belligerence seen at the rallies held in the past couple of days seemed to have ebbed.

Mandal, part of the delegation that met the minister, said: “There are around 22 lakh OMR sheets. The SSC has said it does not have mirror images of the sheets....(Therefore) the SSC will tryto speak to the CBI to get the data from the central agency’s possession.”

The commission will file a review petition in the Supreme Court, which on April 3 cancelled the appointments of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching school staff, saying the entire recruitment process had been vitiated.

“Before the hearing, the SSC will discuss with us the submission its lawyers will make in court,” Mandal said.

Minister Basu said the state and the SSC were in the process of filing review petitions.

“We will file a review petition, the SSC will file too. We expect the deserving teachers to also file a petition,” he said.

The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education has already moved a “miscellaneous” petition in the top court. It requests the court to allow the sacked employees to continue till the completion of the fresh recruitment process, and warns that the state’s school education system would otherwise collapse.

The matter is expected to be heard on April 17.

Basu said: “We will keep a keen eye on the hearing. We will see who stands for the petition and who is against it. That will reveal who wants this impasse to be over and who wants it to continue.”

Another representative of the forum, Mehboob Mandal, said the delegation was able to present all its demands at the meeting.

Asked whether the demonstration outside the SSC office in Salt Lake would continue, Mehboob said the delegation would go back to the venue and decide its next course of action.

Some among the job-losers have been on a relay fast since Thursday.

“The team that came and met us said they were not taking part in any hunger strike. A small group, which the team that met us felt was politically motivated, is provoking a hunger strike and more protests,” Basu said.

“We have no anger for them. If there is any ‘deserving’ teacher among them, they should realise that their actions might jeopardise the future of many who have reposed faith in the government, on Mamata Banerjee. Only a limited group is taking part in the hunger strike. There is a clear division among them (the job-losers).”

Asked whether the sacked employees will “get their salaries”, Basu said: “There is a Supreme Court order that we cannot violate. We will file a review petition. The secondary board too has filed a miscellaneous petition. Let us wait for April 17.”

At the meeting, the delegation had raised the police “excesses” on protesters at the district inspector of school’s office in Kasba on Wednesday, Mehboob said.

He denied the police commissioner’s claim that outsiders had caused the trouble. “It’s not true. There was no outsider,” he said.

Mehboob added that the teachers were under “tremendous mental pressure”.

An angry protester who allegedly wanted to set fire to the DI’s office, too, was under “tremendous pressure”, Mehboob said. “He has a family to take care of. He is the father of a child.”