Tripura HC dismisses sacked teacher’s plea against termination, slaps Rs 25,000 fine for repeated pleas on resolved issue

The petition filed by Pranab Deb, the applicant, was moved by Advocate Amrit Lal Saha in the High Court, who tried to harp on the point that Deb wasn’t served termination notice personally and it infringed upon his right to natural justice.

Speaking on the issue, De said, “The applicant’s petition was mainly around the claim that he wasn’t a party to a case filed by Tanmay Nath (which initially led to the retrenchment of the posts) and that he wasn’t personally served a termination notice but sacked by the government. Our stand was that the government didn’t dismiss anyone, instead, pleaded to the Supreme Court of India and extended their service tenure by six months for a couple of times till March 2020. Their jobs were terminated by judicial order, not by the state government.”

He also contradicted the applicant’s claim that he wasn’t individually provided a termination letter by the government and said the government simply referred the judicial order and informed the employees about their termination while the termination notification was served by the judiciary.

“Since we didn’t terminate them, the question of serving them notifications on behalf of the state government doesn’t arise,” the Advocate General said, adding that a separate petition later filed by Bijoy Krishna Saha, another retrenched school teacher on the same issue, was turned down by the High Court’s Division Bench terming the practice of turning up to the court repeatedly with an already resolved subject as “despicable”.

“Now we have another petition on the same issue where the petitioner doesn’t have a single line to substantiate how he is not party to the case that led to termination of all these (10,323) school teachers. The court runs on taxpayer’s money. The judicial time of the court is being wasted by these repeated petitions on the same issue,” De said.

First-ever live streaming

The proceeding related to the petition was live streamed in the first-ever live streaming of court proceedings of the Tripura High Court in an effort to boost transparency and public access to the judicial system.

With this, the High Court of Tripura registered itself among 25 High Courts of the country to have live streamed judicial proceedings.

All the technical work needed for live streaming, the hardware and software setup, was done by High Court staff members without any outsourcing.

What was the case

The services of as many as 10,323 school teachers were terminated in an order of the Tripura High Court in 2014 following a faulty recruitment process. All these teachers were appointed in different phases since 2010.

The recruitment process was termed faulty since the then Left Front government had recruited them under a rule which selected candidates on three parameters – seniority, merit and need.

A group of 54 disgruntled candidates approached the High Court claiming they weren’t granted jobs despite being eligible. During the hearing of the case, the court found the ‘need’ category unconstitutional for granting jobs among other issues and ordered to retrench all the posts.

The Supreme Court upheld the High Court order in 2017 after hearing a few Special Leave Petitions (SLP) filed by the erstwhile Left Front government and the sacked teachers.

Their jobs expired in December 2017 and then, the then Left Front government inducted them as ad hoc teachers for six months whilst creating fresh posts in which options were kept open for candidates having experiences similar to the 10,323 retrenched teachers.

Meanwhile, the state underwent a change of guard and the BJP-led government came to power in March 2018.

The new government extended the ad hoc recruitment for 1.5 years till March 2020. Some of these teachers got alternate jobs in the meantime and around 8,882 teachers remained.

In an effort to grant them new jobs, the state government sought approval from the apex court to recruit them in separate jobs but without a direct permission, the government’s initiative ended inconclusive.

After their ad hoc tenure ended in 2020, they were rendered jobless. The teachers were provided a one-time financial support of Rs 35,000 each after the retrenchment came into effect.