Supreme Court asks Tripura Govt to clear its stand on 10,323 terminated teachers

A Supreme Court virtual bench on June 19^th, 2020 sought to know the plans of Tripura government on providing the terminated 10,323 teachers (the actual figure now stands at 8,848) alternative benefits.

Hearing an SLP (Special Leave Petition) filed by one Manas Bhowmik, the Apex Court ordered, “We call upon the state to place an appropriate affidavit indicating the stand of the state and what steps the state is contemplating and the kind of benefit that it seeks to extend to the teachers by way of alternate employment”.

The Apex Court granted a time of two weeks for the state to do the needful submissions. “Let the affidavit be filed within two weeks from today,” the Court ruled.

The Court in its order also added, “Mr. Colin Gonsalves, learned senior advocate appearing for the petitioner in the SLP (Civil) diary no 8397 of 2020 submits that at this juncture, the matter may simply be tagged with the main matter and he may advance his submissions on the next occasion”.

Earlier, the Court heard the argument advanced by both the defense and the prosecution and fixed the matter to be heard in next hearing. “List all these matters along with Miscellenious Application Diary no 11372 of 2020 in the last week of July 2020, before the appropriate Court”, the Court further added.

Also read: Coal India commits 1 lakh MT coal to Tripura industries

Terminated teachers detained for protesting

The Tripura police on June 12^th, 2020 arrested a section of the terminated teachers who were staging protest in front of Gandhi statue in Circuit house area under West Tripura district to demand their immediate recruitment.

“The police forcibly took them into custody while they were protesting peacefully maintaining social distancing protocols,” said Bhaskar Deb, secretary of 'Amra 10323' while adding that they were protesting peacefully maintaining social distancing.

It may be mentioned that the then Tripura government, led by chief minister Manik Sarkar, had recruited a total of 10,323 school teachers including graduate teachers, post graduate teachers and under graduate teachers and they were inducted in different phases starting 2010.

In 2014, the High Court of Tripura ordered to terminate all these teachers and termed this recruitment process as unconstitutional. Later in reference to an SLP filed by the state government, the Supreme Court upheld the High Court verdict in March 2017.

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