10,323 teachers cases dismissed with fine by high court of Tripura, shell-shocked teachers refuse to speak

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, October 31, 2025

In a big blow to the faint hopes of illegally retrenched 10,323 teachers for a favourable judgment, the high court bench headed by Justice Sabyasachi Datta-Purkayastha today dismissed all three petitions filed by Subhas Sinha, Santanu Bhattacharjee and Bidhan Das on behalf of the under-graduate ,graduate and post-graduate teachers as having no merit. Having salt rubbed on their long-festering injuries the petitioners have also been directed to pay up a cost of Rs 25 thousand each for filing three infructuous cases and wasting time of the high court.

As mentioned in the ‘cause list’ of the high court issued yesterday the judgement in the case was to be pronounced today and a large number of hapless 10,323 teachers had thronged the high court. Justice Sabyasachi Datta-Purkayastha who had heard all the three cases as the head of the single bench first sat in a division bench with chief justice M.S.Ramachandra Rao and held consultations and then he sat on his single bench . It was around 12-26 PM that Justice Sabyasachi Datta-Purkayastha who did not look his usual vibrant and joyful self took seat and briefly read out the operative part of the judgment dismissing all three cases, filed with ‘liberty’ granted by the supreme court, and imposing a fine of Rs 25 thousand each on the petitioners.

There was a funerary silence in the court as the petitioners as well as other 10,323 teachers looked shell-shocked and seemed unable to react to the judgment. “There is nothing to say , we will wait for the entire judgment to be uploaded in the high court website ; we can admit that we had high hopes specially after the government had failed to provide papers on time and present proper arguments against our plea ; the government lawyer at one point of time had also been admonished by the Justice and a cost was about to be imposed on the government side ; but we have no alternative but to accept the pronouncement and we do so” said a crestfallen teacher.

He said that there is still another case filed by retrenched teacher Mainul Hassan in the bench of chief justice M.S.Ramchandra Rao of the Tripura high court and two other cases filed by Narayan Sutradhar on behalf of 1760 teachers and by Pranab Deb on behalf of 1100 teachers pending in the supreme court. Speaking on condition of anonymity the retrenched teacher said that they will continue efforts to secure justice from the court of law despite the setback suffered today.

more news...