Tripura HC full bench dismisses plea of 10,323 teachers and slaps penalty of Rs. 25000

The full bench, which sat for the first time in the history of Tripura High Court with Chief Justice A K Singh, Justice T Amarnath Gaud and Justice Arindam Lodh on chair, has imposed a penalty of Rs. 25,000 on the petitioner besides setting aside the plea that the judgment of the high court in 2014 didn’t terminate the service of 10323 teachers en mass.

The entire proceeding of the court was also for the first time streamed live.

Pranab Deb, one among the terminated 10,323 teachers, sought to plead on the basis that he had not been individually given termination notice and that he was not anyway be included in the case, by which the state government terminated the job of the teachers recruited between 2010 and 2012 in different government schools.

Deb’s advocate Amrit Lal Saha argued to convince the court on only one point that since his job had been terminated without any notice served to him individually, it infringed upon the Natural Justice of the petitioner as a citizen while countered the Advocate General Siddhartha Shankar De.

The court observed that there were a series of similar petitions in the courts and there speaking orders in all the cases. The present petitioner failed to point out as to how he should be treated differently.

The High Court also took note of the previous judgments given from time to time and found that present petitioner warranted penal action for once again using the time of the High Court.

The Advocate General also pleaded that a penalty should be imposed as the petitioner’s contention appeared to have been ‘cavalier’ in the light of previous judgments which had found the petitioner’s contention ‘despicable’ and the court imposed a fine of Rs 25,000.

Since the entire selection process through which 10,323 teachers including the petitioner had been set aside by the Apex Court for being arbitrary, indulging in nepotism, favoritism, and in a questionable manner, the court pointed out that the petitioner’s job was terminated not for any personal wrongdoing but for the fact that entire selection process had been set aside.

“There were notifications of the government in this regard which were well publicized,” the order stated.

A division bench of the Tripura HC comprising then Chief Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice S C Das had terminated the jobs of 10,323 on May 7, 2014, on finding unfair practices in the recruitment of teachers depriving a large number of genuine and meritorious aspirants.

The High Court had observed the state government’s argument over the need and merit-based employment for the teachers and maintained that the employment policy appeared to be beyond the constitutional limits, which was upheld by the Supreme Court.