Teachers protesting outside Bikash Bhavan, who were advised by chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday to participate in a fresh recruitment exercise so they could retain their jobs beyond December, are still firm in their opposition to writing the tests.

They said the state government should have focused more on pursuing the review petition against the Supreme Court’s April 3order, in which their jobs were terminated.

Mamata urged the teachers to take the tests, because if the Supreme Court rejects the state government’s review petition, those who don’t appear would lose their jobs.

Brindaban Ghosh, a spokesperson for the Deserving Teachers Rights Forum — which has been spearheading the protests outside the education secretariat since May 7 — told a news conference on Tuesday that the government should have prioritised pursuing the review petition.

“The government should have prioritised the review petition. But we see that the government is more keen to conduct the fresh recruitment tests,” he said.

He also suggested that the deadline for submission of online applications be postponed to allow the government more time to pursue the curative petition.

Mamata announced at Nabanna at 5pm on Tuesday that the recruitment notification would be published on May 30, and candidates can submit applications from June 16 to participate in the recruitment process.

The last date for filing applications is July 14.

“Why did the government not think about the legal fight? The deadline for submitting the online application forms should be postponed,” said Ghosh.

Habibulla, another Forum member, expressed concern over the focus on the notification “without any prior discussion”.

“We had many questions that we wanted to discuss with the government. Before that, suddenly the government came up with the notification announcement,” he said.

The protesting teachers at Bikash Bhavan also said many issues remained unclear after the chief minister’s news conference on Tuesday.

“The chief minister has said that additional marks would be given based on experience. But how would that be worked out? Would that be based on the number of years we served? What will the syllabus for the test be? We took our last exam after clearing B.Ed, almost 10 years ago,” said one of the protesting teachers.

Rakesh Alam, a protesting teacher, felt “the government could have explored more options”. He said: “Why did the government not create supernumerary posts for us?”

It is not that all 15,403 teachers “not specifically found tainted” and allowed to return to school till December 31 with salaries are averse to writing the tests.

Mirajul Hossain, who teaches physical science at a city school, said he was happy to learn that the government had decided to offer some advantage based on experience for in-service teachers like him.

“I was unhappy about the vacant posts the chief minister declared. She said the number of proposed posts to be filled was 44,203. But the Supreme Court had scrapped 25,753 teaching and non-teaching jobs on April 3. This includes 15,403 teachers not specifically found tainted by the school service commission, following the apex court’s April 17 order. Only the teachers who wrote tests in 2016 should be allowed to write them again. If the vacancy figure doubles, this means we have to write the tests with fresh teaching job aspirants,” he told Metro.

“We will not accept this and might challenge it legally,” he said.