Tanmay Halder at Jantar Mantar wore a garland of three bags of grain, one with rice, another with black masoor and the third a mix of rice and masoor dal.

“The rice is us, untainted teachers. The black masoor is the tainted teachers. Our situation is like the third bag, which only the Bengal government can and must segregate... I am not going back to school unless I get my job back with respect,” said Halder.

He was a life science teacher at Murshidabad’s Aurangabad High School.

A bus ferrying more than 60 sacked and aggrieved teachers, which left from the Y-channel at Esplanade on Monday, reached Delhi on Wednesday.

The protest by the dismissed teachers at Jantar Mantar came a day before the Supreme Court was to hear a plea by Bengal’s secondary education board to allow the “not specifically tainted” teachers and school staff to continue at government-aided schools till fresh recruitments or the end of the academic year.

On April 3, the Supreme Court terminated the jobs of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff in government-aided schools, saying the entire recruitment process was “vitiated”.

“Where will I go at the age of 38?” asked Halder on Wednesday.

Halder and thousands of other teachers say they are “untainted”. Their proof? Copies of OMR (optical mark recognition) sheets.

Anindita Choudhuri, another dismissed teacher, held up her OMR sheet from the 2016 test. She had passed the recruitment test twice, in 2009 and in 2016. She had quit the first time to care for her ailing son.

Choudhuri taught life science at Nagadi Obaidia High School in Nadia.

“My son is dependent on me. I don’t know how we will manage. Many of us have
children... My son has his Class X exams next year. It is impossible for us to prepare and write a fresh recruitment test now,” she said.

“The school service
commission is responsible. They know who is tainted and who isn’t. Only the government can solve this.”

Both Shilpa Basu and her husband Debraj Paul, who taught in different government schools in Krishnanagar, lost their jobs. She taught chemistry. He taught physics. Their former students had been calling them frequently, she said.

“They are like our children. They ask me when I am coming back. They tell me to fight well to get my job back... The chief minister has said that we should continue to teach voluntarily. But we can’t go back unless we are reinstated with respect,” said Basu.

“Respect” echoed in posters and slogans at the teachers’ protest. They said they hoped politicians would join them in solidarity at Jantar Mantar on the hot Wednesday afternoon. By sunset, only a few representatives from Left parties had visited their protest site.

The teachers left Delhi for Calcutta by bus on Wednesday night.