Hours after being removed from the protest site by the police, teaching job aspirants filed a petition before the Calcutta High Court challenging a single bench order that imposed Section 144 of the CrPC at the venue.

The candidates, in the petition on Friday, claimed that they have a right to hold a peaceful protest.

Firdaus Shamim, the lawyer for the petitioners, said on Saturday that the appeal against the single bench order will be taken up for hearing on October 28 by a division bench.

Hundreds of candidates were staging a sit-in, earlier in the week, outside the West Bengal Board of Primary Education office at Karunamoyee in Salt Lake, near here, claiming that they were denied jobs in state-sponsored and aided schools despite having cleared Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) way back in 2014.

Some had even resorted to hunger strike to press for their demand.

They were removed from the protest venue by the police following a Calcutta High Court order enforcing section 144 of the CrPC at the site of agitation.

Earlier, supporters of the CPM and the BJP hit the streets on Friday as the two parties started vying with each other to capitalise on a possible opportunity to corner the Mamata Banerjee government in the wake of the forceful eviction of agitators, who had cleared the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) in 2014, from their protest site at Salt Lake.

The alleged scams related to TET and the School Service Commission (SSC) have kept the state on the boil for over a year. Sensing an opportunity to embarrass the Mamata Banerjee government, the CPM — primarily its student and youth organisations — had been giving tactical support to the agitation by teachers ever since the first sign of discontent with the recruitment process had been noticed.