Five sacked schoolteachers started a hunger strike late on Thursday, demanding that the process of submitting applications for a fresh hiring process for teachers be put on hold.

The application window opens on June 16 and closes on July 14.

The hunger strike, at Salt Lake’s Central Park, started hours after the school service commission chairperson told a delegation of protesting teachers that the hiring exercise from Monday could not be put on hold.

Chinmoy Mandal, one of the five teachers, said: “When the state government and the SSC have filed a review petition on the termination of our jobs, why can’t the process of submitting application forms be put on hold till the Supreme Court delivers its judgment? Why are they deciding beforehand that we have to write fresh selection tests?”

The Supreme Court cancelled the appointments of 17,206 schoolteachers on April 3 because the SSC’s 2016 recruitment process was “vitiated”.

In a modified order on April 17, the court said 15,403 “not specifically found tainted” teachers could work till December 31, but had to clear fresh tests to retain their jobs after that.

Mandal, a leader of the Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum, is among those “not specifically found tainted” opposed to writing fresh tests.

An SSC official said the commission could not find substance in their logic that the hiring exercise should be kept in abeyance till the court disposes of the review pleas.

“There is no guarantee that the Supreme Court will immediately take up the petitions after it resumes on July 15, after the summer vacation. Thousands of petitions are pending before the court. So, on what basis can we put the exercise on hold? There is no room for wishful thinking. We have fixed the roster of the fresh recruitment exercise based on what the Supreme Court ordered,” the official told The Telegraph.

“On the morning of June 16, the SSC will upload a link announcing that the application forms can be submitted from 5pm on June 16. If the Supreme Court considers our petitions, the recruitment exercise can be put on hold or cancelled,” he added.

The SSC submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court on May 30 on initiating the hiring drive. The commission published the recruitment notification the same day.

In its April 17 order, the apex court had said the SSC would have to apprise the court of the fresh hiring process by May 31.

Contacted, SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar declined to comment.

A delegation of four sacked teachers went to the Assembly and met Speaker Biman Banerjee, seeking his intervention in putting the hiring process on hold. The teachers submitted a memorandum to Banerjee.