10,323 teachers facing retrenchment threaten rail, road blockade in Tripura

 FROM A CORRESPONDENT

Agartala, Dec 6:  10,323 teachers, who are facing retrenchment after December 31 have threatened to launch an indefinite rail and road blockade movement if the state government cannot do any alterte arrangement for them. ‘Our family members also will join us’, they said.

They are agitating to get back their jobs and said they will block the rail and road at Manughat in Dhalai district through which the rail and the Assam-Agartala tiol Highway passes and considered to be the lifeline of the state. The 10,323 teachers in the primary, upper primary and madhyamik level were given appointment between 2010 and 2013 by the state government as per the recruitment policy of the state government.

However, all these appointments were declared illegal by a division bench of the Tripura High Court following a petition filed by some deprived candidates and instructed the state government to retrench all of them after December 31 which was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court also. The appointments were declared illegal for gross violation of the recruitment rules framed by the state government itself. The court also declared the recruitment rules framed by the state government as illegal as it violates the fundamental rights of the citizens as well as contradictory to the constitution.

Immediately after the court order the state government announced that it will make alterte arrangement for the teachers facing retrenchment and created twelve thousand new non-teaching posts to rehabilitate them. That also was challenged and now the matter is pending in the Supreme Court.

It may be recalled that the state government conducted interview thrice in one decade in 2002, 2006 and 2009 but none were given appointment before 2010.

Meanwhile, the state government has filed a petition to the Supreme Court seeking at least one year extension of the teachers as the state will face acute shortage of teachers if these 10323 teachers are retrenched after December 31 and academic activities in the state will suffer seriously. The matter will come for hearing on December 11.  Sudip Roy Barman, MLA of the BJP described the situation as grave and in a letter to the Chief Minister Manik Sarkar demanded that a special session of the state assembly should be summoned to discuss the matter.