Last nail on the coffin of hapless 10,323 teachers, case lost with liability to pay cost

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, November 4, 2025

The high court judgment, pronounced on October 31, dismissing the pleas of the hapless 10,323 teachers for reinstatement in service on legal, constitutional and laid down procedural grounds has cast a deep shadow of grief and uncertainty over the future of the petitioners. It has also plunged them into an unfathomable pit of suffering and privation for the rest of their lives as long as they live in this world. With more than 200 teachers having already died prematurely of diseases without treatment or by suicide, the surviving among the jinxed group of 10,323 teachers now look with agony at a tormenting future of starvation, semi-starvation and death without treatment.

Be that as it may, the judgment has left a number of crucial questions unanswered while sparking debates and discussion that will continue well into the future. What has come as a big shock is the cost of Rs 25 thousand on each petitioner because the cases had been filed with ‘liberty’ granted by the supreme court even though the high court can impose cost only when there are unreasonable relitigations and recurrence of same themes cited as ground for cases. In this case relief had been sought for unanswered questions on legal, constitutional and procedural grounds behind the dismissal.

Apart from this, the parent judgement of then chief justice Deepak Kumar Gupta and Justice Swapan Chandra Das on the 10,323 case pronounced on May 7 2014 had categorically stated in Para 127 that the order would have prospective effect and in the instant case only teachers whose jobs had been challenged on ground of recruitment policy of 2003 would be terminated from service . This very order was upheld by the Supreme Court bench of then Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and Uday Umesh Lalit in their order of March 29 2017 besides making an innocuous observation on eligibility. But this crucial fact seemingly had not been considered with due weightage in the judgment. This is in spite of the fact that a bench of the high court of Tripura itself headed by former chief justice Aquil Qureshi had invoked Para 127 and upholding of it by the Supreme Court to dismiss a plea for retrenchment of 4 science teachers recruited in 2012.

Besides, the point raised by the petitioners on Article 311 (2) of the constitution mandating issuance of notice, inquiry and evidence before retrenching a serving employee or officer also did not figure as a matter of consideration in the judgment. There are only three exceptions in the Article 311(2) that rules out inquiry, evidence and issuance of notice-pending criminal proceedings, threat of larger turbulence and question of state security against the individual involved for dismissal . None of the three exceptions applies to the luckless 10,323 teachers. The provisions made in Article 311 (2) with its basis in the constitutional assembly debates and contention of Dr B.R.Ambedkar, chairman of the drafting committee, had been cited during the hearing of the case.

Finally, the point raised by the petitioners on behalf of 10,323 teachers on the violation of the crucial fundamental right enshrined in Article 21 of the constitution also seem to have been given the go-by in the judgment. The CCA rules based on Article 311 and bolstered by several Supreme Court judgments also required consideration of the pleas made by the petitioners over and above the principles of natural justice. What also appears quite bizarre from the judgment is that the case laws cited excluded many other case laws in the form of Supreme Court and high court judgments favourable to the petitioners. “In our constitutional democracy we have to accept the judicial verdicts and we do so but I must say this is a horrendous tragedy affecting the fate and future of so many teachers who had committed no fault and who had a water-tight case” said a crestfallen retrenched teacher tearfully.

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