Tripura HC rejects plea of 10,323 teachers for reinstatement

way2barak, Sep 27 : In a significant judgement, the full bench of the Tripura High Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea of 10,323 government retrenched teachers for their reinstatement.

The full High Court bench consisting of Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Sinha, Justice T. Amarnath Gour, and Justice Arindam Lodh, dismissed the sacked teachers’ plea which challenged the mass termination of these teachers by the state government, citing violations of Article 311 (II) of the Constitution and Order 1 Rule 8.

Advocate Amrit Lal Saha, representing the petitioner, Pranab Deb, argued that the termination of the teachers and their dismissal processes were unlawful, and hence the 10,323 teachers should be reinstated.

In response, Advocate General Siddhartha Sankar De referenced Supreme Court judgments in the Tanmay Nath case.

He asserted that the notifications published in newspapers and broadcasted on TV news channels constituted valid modes of communication.

Moreover, the Supreme Court had deemed the recruitment rules of the state government “bad in law.”

De said that the government had not terminated the teachers rather had increased the validity of their jobs by six months on few occasions but they lost their jobs due to the implementation of the judicial order and which found that the entire recruitment process during the previous Left Front government under which they were employed was illegal.

The Advocate General also pointed to Supreme Court orders and the alleged failure of the petitioners to separate their case from the Tanmay Nath case, as evident in the High Court’s order in the Bijay Krishna Saha case.

He referred to a 2019 order by the division bench comprising then-Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Arindam Lodh.

Ultimately, the arguments presented by Advocate General Siddhartha Sankar De prevailed, leading to the full bench’s dismissal of the petition and the imposition a fine of Rs 25,000 on the petitioner.

The entire court proceedings were made accessible to the public through the High Court’s YouTube channel, marking a new era of transparency.

After the Tripura High Court and the Supreme Court had terminated the jobs of 10,323 government teachers in 2011, 2014 and 2017, the then Left Front government had created 13,000 posts to accommodate these teachers alternatively.

However, the CPI-M led Left Front lost the 2018 assembly polls to the BJP.

The high court had in 2011 and 2014 terminated the services of 10,323 teachers, saying the selection criteria had “discrepancies” and subsequently, the Supreme Court upheld the HC’s decision.

After separate appeals by the previous Left and the incumbent BJP governments, the Supreme Court, however, had extended their services up to March 2020.

The sacked teachers including hundreds of women since their retrenchment continued agitation demanding their reinstatement.