The schoolteachers sacked by a Supreme Court order will tell Mamata Banerjee on Monday that they will not write another exam to regain their jobs and her government must find another way to reinstate them.

Representatives of these teachers, dismissed en masse from Bengal’s government-aided schools, on Sunday said their plight was the “state government’s fault” and it was therefore up to the government to make amends.

Shortly after the Supreme Court cancelled the appointments of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff on Thursday, saying the entire recruitment process had been “vitiated”, Mamata had said she would meet the dismissed teachers and hear them out.

The meeting is to be held at the Netaji Indoor Stadium where the chief minister is expected to be accompanied by education minister Bratya Basu.

“We will not sit for another written test. Nor will we accept any honorarium from the state government,” Chinmoy Mandal, a spokesperson for the Deserving Teachers Rights platform, said.

“We are suffering because of the state government’s fault. So it’s up to the state government to decide how it would protect our jobs. We’ll say this to the chief minister at tomorrow’s meeting.”

Mandal, who taught at a school in Halishahar, North 24-Parganas, said the innocent would not have lost their jobs had the state government taken the initiative to segregate those the apex court termed “tainted” from those “not specifically tainted”.

“The state government had from the very beginning insisted on saving all the 25,753 jobs. It should have instead focused on saving the jobs of the 19,000 who were untainted,” Mandal said.

“It could have started the exercise (segregation) after Calcutta High Court scrapped the entire panel (of appointees) in April last year.”

Mandal added: “The state government must realise that the teachers are depressed. Already, one teacher has attempted suicide. Many more might do so if the state government does not find a way out.”

A division bench of the high court had on April 22, 2024, said all the appointments were being scrapped because it was impossible to separate the deserving from the undeserving.

Mehbub Mandal, another sacked teacher, too said the state government should have focused on separating the tainted from the untainted based on the evidence provided by the CBI.

“But the state government did not. Therefore, the Supreme Court upheld the high court order,” Mehbub, who has lost his job at a North 24-Parganas school, said.

“We also fail to understand why, when the CBI had furnished details about the tainted candidates, the Supreme Court scrapped the entire panel. This was not the natural justice expected of the Supreme Court.”

Mehbub highlighted that the Supreme Court hadindeed drawn a line between two kinds of appointees,asking the tainted to return the salaries they had drawn but sparing the untainted.

“Then how could the court terminate the jobs of those who are untainted? Let the state government file a review petition or curative petition so that our jobs are protected,” he said.

The state government is preparing a report in consultation with the school service commission so that it can plead in its review petition before the Supreme Court that Thursday’s order has dealt a body blow to Bengal’s school education system.

The district inspectors of schools are preparing reports on how the schools are struggling to hold classes.

The government is also likely to argue that the large-scale sacking of teachers will affect the evaluation of Madhyamik and higher secondary exam scripts.