Agartala : The Supreme Court Monday stayed a Tripura High Court order to terminate the jobs of 10,323 government teachers and allowed them to continue beyond Dec 31 and until the final disposal of the case.
“A division bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice Arun Mishra passed an order allowing the continuation in service of all the 10,323 teachers till the final disposal of the case or until further orders,” said a Tripura law department official, refusing to disclose his identity.
He said: “The Supreme Court has stayed the Tripura High Court order and passed its direction following an interlocutory application filed before the apex court by the state government to obtain a clear cut order from it on the high court’s deadline of Dec 31.”
A division bench of the high court, comprising Chief Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice Swapan Chandra Das, passed an order May 7 terminating the jobs of 10,323 school teachers after Dec 31, citing irregularities in recruitment.
The law department official said the Supreme Court would hear Jan 9 the three separate Special Leave Petitions (SLPs) filed against the high court judgment ordering the termination of the jobs.
The SLPs were filed by the Tripura government and the teachers affected by the high court order.
The high court also asked the state government to start a fresh recruitment process by December 2014 and frame a new employment policy within two months.
The high court, after hearing the state government and the complainants, passed the order on a batch of 58 petitions filed by those who had failed to secure jobs as government teachers.
Tripura’s Left Front government recruited 1,100 post-graduate and 4,617 graduate teachers in 2010 and 4,606 under-graduate teachers in December 2013.
Tripura Education Minister Tapan Chakraborty said the state government is hopeful that the fate of the 10,323 teachers would be protected after the final judgment of the Supreme Court.
The main opposition parties, including the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and the Trinamool Congress, earlier welcomed the high court’s verdict and sought fresh recruitment.