The high court on Thursday gave permission to the state government to file an application seeking that the teachers’ sit-in be shifted from Bikash Bhavan.

“You file the application in the (early) hour of the court tomorrow. I will hear the matter tomorrow and pass an order, keeping the interest of both parties,” Justice Tirthankar Ghosh told state counsel Kalyan Bandyopadhyay in open court. The formal order was not uploaded till late on Thursday.

“Let the state’s submissions be presented by way of an application.... So far as the present petitioners are concerned, the arrangement earlier proposed would continue till tomorrow morning,” said Justice Ghosh.

Bandyopadhyay agreed promptly and assured the judge that the application would be filed in time.

The court closes for summer recess after Friday. It resumes on June 9.

The petitioners, Indrajit Mondal and Sudip Konar, are two of the 15 summoned by police in connection with the May 15 violence at Bikash Bhavan.

Mondal and Konar have been granted protection from any coercive action by the police.

Bandyopadhyay told the court that Konar was not a schoolteacher but a Group D staff member. “What was he doing there?” he asked.

Calling the court the “custodian of the Constitution”, he named the government offices affected by the protests. He mentioned the West Bengal Administrative Tribunal, the State Vigilance Commission and a State Bank of India office. Over 50 offices have been paralysed by the protest, he said.

“Everything has been stalled due to the agitation. We want them removed. Not only offices in Bikash Bhavan, but other offices in the area have also been affected.”

On May 15, thousands attempted to storm the education secretariat. They were protesting against the Supreme Court’s mass termination of school jobs because, it said, the entire recruitment process conducted by the state school service commission in 2016 was “vitiated”.

Over 3,000 employees were trapped in the building for over eight hours until the police used force to disperse some of the demonstrators.

The sacked teachers have been staging a sit-in outside Bikash Bhavan since May 7.

The Supreme Court terminated the jobs of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching school staff on April 3. Modifying its earlier order, the apex court said on April 17 that the teachers “not specifically found tainted” could work till December.

The court also asked the state and the SSC to initiate a recruitment exercise and submit an affidavit by May 31.

The “not specifically found tainted” teachers can take part in the hiring exercise, and would get an age relaxation, but no additional advantage.

Education minister Bratya Basu has said that the protesters are those who are against a fresh test.