Organised by the Surat Shahar Khangi Prathamik Shikshak Sangh, the rally was aimed at highlighting the plight of teachers working in private schools. Leaders at the rally announced later in the evening that more than 500 teachers of private schools would go on a mass casual leave on Tuesday as a mark of protest against school managements, which they said had not increased their salaries since the past more than three years, even as government teachers had benefitted from the wage scale revision.

Teachers carried an effigy of corruption as a dead body in the rally, which began from Bhagal Char Rasta at noon and concluded at the Ashwini Kumar Road crematorium. A shok shabha was also held at the crematorium.

The effigy was left unclaimed at the Surat Railway Station, where leaders urged the police to take it to the New Civil Hospital to conduct an autopsy.

Later, addressing a meeting beside the crematorium in the afternoon, association president Dipak Patel and General Secretary Kanhaiyalal Suratwala criticised the state government for failing to pressurise school managements to implement new wage scales in schools.

``It seems Education Minister Anandiben Patel is a party to the corruption,'' Patel alleged, questioning the delay in the implementation of the wage revision.

Suratwala, too, minced no words in castigating the government, alleging that as it got a share of the profits it was not interested in the rights of teachers.

Alleging that the government had failed to check fee hikes in private schools, they said the recent agitations by parents were a proof of this.

They alleged that the school managements though had collected crores of rupees in the form of donations and fees had not hiked teachers' salaries by even a rupee.