Representatives of the dismissed school employees are scheduled to meet education minister Bratya Basu on Friday to discuss ways to end the impasse.

Doubts had been cast on their participation in the meeting after some of them were allegedly beaten up by police while protesting outside the office of the district inspector of schools in Kasba on Wednesday.

On Thursday, at the seat of the protest by the dismissed staff near the school service commission office in Salt Lake, a temporary stage for those joining an indefinite hunger strike was set up. One teacher started a hunger strike.

“Dawle dawle anashane jog din (let’s join the hunger strike in greater numbers),” a teacher announced.

A spokesperson for the Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum said they wanted to keep the door open for talks.

“We need to meet the education minister and officials of the state government so we can raise our demands,” said Chinmoy Mandal.

The demands include segregating the “deserving” from the “undeserving” and the publication of the OMR sheets of all 22 lakh candidates who wrote the 2016 test.

The meeting will be attended by minister Basu, school service commission chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar, education secretary Binod Kumar and other officials of the education and law departments.

Many aggrieved teachers who spent Wednesday night on the footpath outside the SSC office are looking forward to the outcome of Friday’s meeting at Bikash Bhavan,
the education department’s secretariat.

The protesters had spread newspaper sheets to sit on the Salt Lake footpath. The teachers found it difficult. But nothing was worse than losing jobs, they said.

The footpath that the teachers occupied was a few yards away from the SSC office.

They started assembling outside the office around Wednesday noon when judge-turned-BJP MP Abhijit Gangopadhyay came to meet SSC chairperson Majumdar with the promise of ending the impasse.

But as police barricaded the spot, the teachers, coming from as far as Bankura and West Midnapore, had to shift base to the footpath outside Rabindra Bhavan, an office of Rabindra Bharati University that offers online and distance education.

“Is this why we became teachers? We are moving from one footpath to another with no hope in sight,” said Subarna Roy, one of the protesters.

Roy taught at a North 24-Parganas school till April 3, when the Supreme Court scrapped over 25,000 teaching and non-teaching jobs in government-aided schools.

The apex court said the entire recruitment process was “vitiated”.

“I would leave home early to go to school, Now, I am coming to the SSC office,” said Moumita Sarkar, who was posted at a school in Howrah.

A teacher who came from East Burdwan wondered how long she would continue to go to the SSC office.

“But I am finding it difficult at home. I am feeling suffocated. The fear of facing unpleasant questions is driving me crazy,” the teacher said.