Hundreds of teachers, who lost jobs after the Tripura high court deemed their appointments illegal in 2014, have been staging a hunger strike here over the past seven days, demanding their reinstatement.
The protesters claimed that Chief Minister Manik Saha, during a meeting with a delegation representing the retrenched teachers, had given assurance that a detailed discussion over the possibility of job restoration would be held after Lakshmi puja in the presence of heads of departments concerned, but “no such measures have been taken thus far”.
“It’s been weeks since Lakshmi puja, but we have not received any intimation from the government about the meeting. That is the reason we have started this hunger strike,” Arbindu Sharma, one of the protesters, told PTI on Wednesday.
In March 2017, the Supreme Court had upheld a 2014 Tripura high court order which terminated the services of 10,323 government teachers after finding irregularities in the recruitment process.
The agitators had been camping at Orient Chowmuhani in Agartala since 20 October to press for their demand.
Sharma lamented that the retrenched teachers were going through financial crisis, having been out of job for years.
“We want the government to convene the meeting at the earliest, as promised by the chief minister, to explore the feasibility of reinstating our jobs. Our agitation will continue till a solution is reached,” Sharma added.
Earlier, education minister Ratan Lal Nath had said an alternative arrangement was being mulled to provide employment to the 10,323 teachers.
Despite repeated attempts, the minister or education department officials could not be reached for a comment.
The events in Agartala resonates of protests held by teachers in the north eastern states of Nagaland and Meghalaya and West Bengal this month.
In Nagaland, a group of teachers too held a hunger strike demanding regularisation of their services. The All Nagaland Ad hoc Teachers Group 2015 batch (ANATG) called off their protest on 8 October after the government gave its word to resolve the issue by December 2023
Read more: High Powered Committee set up to resolve ANATG issue
In Meghalaya, hundreds of teachers of Meghalaya Government Lower Primary Contractual Teachers’ Association (MGLPCTA) staged a protest demanding for reinstatement in their jobs after their services were terminated two years ago for failing to clear the Meghalaya Teachers Eligibility Test (MTET).
Read more: Meghalaya teachers continue to protest outside secretariat
In Kolkata, around 500 protesting TET 2014 candidates were bundled in waiting police vehicles by the police personnel on the night of 20 October, 84 hours after they launched an indefinite sit-in near the head office of West Bengal Board of Primary Education at Salt Lake here demanding immediate recruitment in primary schools as teachers without interviews and tests.
The protestors, aspirants of primary teachers’ posts in state-run and aided schools, claimed to have cleared the TET but their names did not feature in the merit list.
