A teacher from Barasat who lost her job will send her husband to the protest site at the Y-channel in Esplanade on days she will not be able to come herself.

Two teachers from Uluberia, Howrah, are coming to the Y-channel every alternate day. Jinia Pal and Rupali Sadhukan said they have families to look after and were therefore taking turns to come to protest.

“Besides, we are staring at a longer phase of protest. Therefore, we need to use our energy judiciously,” said Rupali, who used to teach mathematics at a secondary school in West Midnapore.

The terminated teachers and non-teaching staff who have assembled at Y-channel are tweaking their plans and opting for different ways so they can associate themselves with the protests for a long time.

A majority of the dismissed and aggrieved school employees who shifted their protest venue from the road outside the school service commission’s (SSC) office in Salt Lake to the Gandhi statue on Mayo Road early on Saturday moved to the Y-channel late on Saturday.

The shift in venue from Mayo Road to the Y-channel was because a forum that had filed the petition alleging irregularities in the hiring of the teaching and non-teaching staff, leading to the en masse termination, started a protest at the Gandhi statue on Saturday evening.

Jharna Biswas from Barasat used to teach at a school in Hingalganj in North 24-Parganas till April 3, when the Supreme Court terminated the jobs of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching employees because, it said, the entire recruitment process was “vitiated”.

“It was still not clear to me how come the Supreme Court that could decide what was under a shrine hundreds of years ago, could not differentiate between the tainted and the untainted despite the school service commission presenting evidence. We are staring at a long haul of protest. On days I will not be able to come to the protest site, my husband will come as my representative,” said Jharna.

She used to teach Bengali at the secondary level.

Her husband has a business.

“He will come to the Y-channel to get updates about what is going on at the protest site and keep me posted,” Jharna posted.

Jinia, from Uluberia, was a teacher of economics at a higher secondary school in West Midnapore.

She had joined the protest on Friday, when it was outside the SSC office in Salt Lake.

Then she had gone back home.

On Sunday morning, she returned, this time to the Y-channel.

“After spending the night here along with other protesters, I will go home on Monday. Then, after a day’s break, I will join again. It is not possible to keep protesting out on the streets amid the sweltering heat at a stretch. So we have to take breaks,” she said.

On Sunday afternoon, Jinia and Rupali were speaking to the leaders of the Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum asking what could be the way forward.

Rupali asked whether it would be proper for the sacked teachers to file a writ petition challenging the apex court order.

Even as the state government is filing a clarification petition and review petition on the Supreme Court order, the teachers’ forum, too, is getting ready to file a review petition.

“The fresh petition means legal expenses. And what if our review petition is defeated?” asked Rupali while sitting on sheets of newspaper on the footpath in Esplanade.