Agartala: The 10,323 teachers of the State get a temporary relief as the Supreme Court on Thursday has asked the state government to extend their jobs for two years on ad-hoc basis. The court also ordered the government to take initiative so that these teachers can complete their BEd degrees within a stipulated time.
The court has also decided to make a review on the whole issue after four months.
SC bench comprising Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Kurien Joseph, Justice Udoy Umesh Lalit delivered the judgment.
Hailing the court verdict, senior CPI-M Pabitra Kar said, “The 10,323 Tripura teachers got a major relief for two years. But nobody knows what will happen to these teachers after two years.”
Expressing satisfaction over the SC verdict, the teachers hope that the government will help them to complete the B.Ed degree within the two years of their ad-hoc tenure. If they can complete their B.Ed in the state, teachers feel, their jobs can be secured.
Talking to EastMojo, Narayan Das, a teachers, said, “We are happy by the decision of SC and also would like to thank the BJP government for saving our life.”
The BJP had promised that they would save the jobs of 10,323 teachers and, accordingly, we have completed the first step successfully, said BJP leader Prabir Chakraborty.
Chakraborty added: “It was the CPI-M government who recruited the teachers illegally and because of them, the teachers had to suffer a lot. But we promised them to solve their problems.”
The appointment of 10,323 teachers was cancelled by the Tripura High Court on May 7, 2014 after spotting irregularities in the recruitment process. The irregularities surfaced after 59 ‘qualified’ youths filed a petition in the high court.
The then Chief Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice Swapan Chandra Das had passed the judgment that the jobs would end on Dec 31 that year, as appointments were not made following the norms.
The high court had asked the government to recruit those deprived youth and save the 10,323 jobs, but the then government didn’t go by the order and instead challenged the verdict in the apex court.
Later, the SC on March 29 last year upheld the judgment of the high court and said the jobs would end on December 31.
But the CPI-M government then requested the SC to extend the jobs for another six months as the schools would fall short of teachers in the middle of the session. Later the CPI-M government announced vacancies against 12,000 non-teaching education staff posts allegedly bypassing the apex court’s order. But the government’s decision was challenged.
To check whether the rules can be amended, a team of teachers reportedly filed a memorandum to the state law department. The apex court will decide the fate of the teachers who have served close to 10 years in service.
