HC quashes Tripura University move to cancel professor recruitment

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, July 8, 2026

The Tripura High Court has quashed Tripura University's 2021 communication effectively cancelling a long-pending recruitment process for the post of Professor in Pharmacy and directed the university to conduct the interview of the shortlisted candidate within two months.

Justice Biswajit Palit allowed a writ petition filed by Dr Biplab De, holding that the university's March 16, 2021 communication had "no legal basis" and violated Article 14 of the Constitution.

The recruitment process began with a May 5, 2016 advertisement for several teaching posts, including one unreserved Professor in Pharmacy post. Dr De, currently a Professor at the Regional Institute of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology (RIPSAT), was shortlisted for an interview scheduled on October 31, 2017, but it was deferred as the experts' specialisation did not match the advertised discipline.

The university later claimed that implementation of the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) reservation policy and fresh advertisements necessitated a new recruitment process.

Rejecting the stand, the High Court noted that the university failed to produce any document showing that the 2016 recruitment had been cancelled and had filled several other posts under the same advertisement. It also held that the EWS policy, introduced in 2019, could not retrospectively invalidate a recruitment process initiated in 2016.

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