Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said the Bengal government would issue a notification for the recruitment of school staff for secondary and higher secondary levels on May 30 and complete the appointments well before the deadline set by the Supreme Court.

The state will also pursue a review petition in the apex court simultaneously to try and get some relief for the sacked teachers and school staff.

The government announced several sops for the teachers who will be in service until December 31 and will have to crack the fresh selection test to retain their jobs.

The sops include age relaxation and additional points to be awarded to the in-service teachers based on their experience.

Mamata said her government was also exploring options to appoint in several departments of the state government, including education, the 8,000-odd Group C and D employees who have been identified as tainted and barred from returning to schools even temporarily by the Supreme Court.

The notification for non-teaching employees will be issued three to four days after the notification for teachers, she said.

“The Supreme Court said the panel had been cancelled. A fresh advertisement has to be issued and an affidavit of compliance filed by May 31. I want to make it clear that I am not doing this willingly. I did not want this from my heart. It is a very sensitive matter. As May 31 is the deadline, we have to issue the advertisement and file the affidavit on May 30,” the chief minister told a news conference at Nabanna.

“The application process will commence on June 16. The last date of online applications is July 14. We have kept the window wide as the review petition will be pursued at the same time. The panel (of names) will be published on November 15 because we have been told to complete the recruitment process by December. The counselling will commence from November 20,” the chief minister said.

She clarified that if the review petition filed by the state government and the School Service Commission against the Supreme Court’s April 3 order on termination of over 25,000 teaching and non-teaching staff in government-aided schools did not yield any result, the state would wrap up the recruitment process by November itself in pursuance of the Supreme Court’s April 17 order.

“The written test, the scrutiny, the challenge, the publication of results and the interview will be completed in the meantime,” the chief minister said.

On April 3, the Supreme Court called the entire recruitment process carried out by the SSC in 2016 “vitiated” and scrapped the jobs.

On April 17, the apex court allowed the teachers who have been found not specifically tainted to return to work till December but asked the state government and the SSC to file an affidavit by May 31 on the start of the fresh recruitment process.

The court had said that teachers not specifically tainted would be given only age relaxation in the new recruitment exercise.

The chief minister said the total number of vacancies proposed to be filled was 44,203.

She said this included the 24,203 teaching posts deemed to be vacant after the court order.

“We have created additional teaching posts because many posts have remained vacant over the years. There are 11,517 additional posts for classes IX and X and 6,912 for classes XI and XII. There are 571 additional Group C posts and 1,000 additional Group D posts,” she said.

An official of the school education department said the gazette notification that the state government would publish in a day or two would make it clear whether the advertisement for all 44,203 posts would be issued on May 30.

“The chief minister said the notification would be for teaching posts only. But the 44,203 posts include non-teaching posts, too. So we are waiting for the notification,” the official said.

The state government could not make any school appointments after 2016 because of a spate of court cases against alleged irregularities in that round of recruitments based on tests held by the SSC in 2016.

Vacant posts for classes IX and X, which include the terminated ones, stand at 23,212.

Vacant posts for classes XI and XII, including those terminated, are 12,514.

There are 2,989 vacant posts in Group C and 5,488 in Group D.

“Those who have worked, but have crossed their age limit, will get an age relaxation so they can sit for the tests irrespective of their age. Besides, those who have worked will be given marks based on their experience,” Mamata said.

After the April 17 court order, the SSC had segregated 15,403 teachers as those not specifically tainted from a pool of 17,206 teachers.

Some of these 15,403 teachers, who are members of the Deserving Teachers Rights Forum, have been staging a sit-in near Bikash Bhavan since May 7 against a re-examination.

The chief minister urged them to drop their opposition to writing the tests afresh because they would lose their jobs after December 31.

“We should wait for the review. But it will not be wise to say at this point that we will not write the tests. If you don’t write the tests, you could lose your job. This is not our order. This is not the state government’s order. Some people with vested interests had the panel scrapped. We will tell you to try both option 1 (writing the tests) and option 2 (watch for the outcome of the review petition). If you don’t take option 1 and then the outcome of option 2 goes against you, you will not have any chance of getting the job back. I want you to get your jobs back,” the chief minister said.

“Submit your applications. If you receive a call to write the examinations, you respond. Once the Supreme Court reopens after the summer vacation, we will raise the review petition. If the review petition gets rejected, don’t worry. Write the examination, you will get your job back with full honour. Why are you scared of option 1?” she said.

“In our review petition, we have appealed for the non-teaching staff as well. We are consulting with our lawyers on how the non-teaching staff and the teachers who have lost their jobs could be accommodated,” Mamata said.

The state government has decided to give a monthly allowance to Group C and D employees from April 1 till further notice.