Teachers that Tripura chose to forget

In the silent corners of South Tripura, the jungle overlooks the homes of erstwhile teachers. It’s a scene common across Tripura: 10,323 teachers were dismissed by the state government 10 years ago. 

Tanmay Nath and others filed a case in 2014 against the wrongful recruitment of 462 government teachers by the then-state government of The Left Front. The state government had recruited 10,323 teachers, including 1,100 postgraduate, 4,617 graduate, and 4,606 undergraduate teachers. The Tripura High Court ruled in favour of Tanmay Nath and others, stating that the state government’s 2003 Employment Policy was “bad in law”. 

Para-127 of the High Court verdict clearly stated that the order of the division bench applies only to teachers mentioned in the case by Tanmay Nath and others. The state government, however, terminated the entire cohort of 10,323 government teachers. Even today, a majority of these teachers are unemployed.

Pradeep Reang is one of them. When I met him in Reang Para, a village on the edge of the forest, he greeted me with a quiet smile and a tattered plastic chair outside his mud house. 

“I wasn’t even named in the case,” he told me. “We [teachers] filed RTIs. The response confirmed it. Still, we were all terminated.”

Their appeals to different courts failed. Their protests, including a large gathering in Agartala in 2021, were met with water cannons and tear gas.

“When our petitions were dismissed, we turned to whatever work we could find,” said Pradeep, “I started farming and rubber tapping. Some teachers drove rickshaws, sold vegetables, or turned to odd jobs… 180 [160] teachers died, while some committed suicide due to economic hardships. Teaching is a well-respected profession. We lost respect and income overnight.” 

Private schools are reluctant to hire them due to probable legal implications. “We have been stigmatised. People don’t know who the 400 [462] teachers mentioned in the case are, so they are sceptical. Private schools don’t want to get involved. All doors are shut!” shared Pradeep.

The government’s response since has been, at best, evasive. In 2018, the new BJP-led state government offered a one-time extension to teachers, which expired in March 2020. On March 31, 2020, one week into the first coronavirus lockdown, 8,882 teachers were again unemployed.

I headed to another village in South Tripura to meet three terminated teachers to gain more clarity. I met Bijoy, Samyukta, and Subhash (names changed to protect their identities).

“We were proud to serve,” Samyukta told me. “It was a dignified job. The verdict ruined our lives. We were young and in our prime 10 years ago. We could’ve achieved a lot in life.”

Recent developments make their story even more painful. In April 2025, the Tripura government acknowledged the teacher shortage and the need to find “the best teachers” from outside the state to improve education quality. The terminated teachers, still living and searching for employment in Tripura, weren’t even mentioned by the state government.

While the state government’s decision to address the shortfall is a step in the right direction, what about the well-trained and experienced former teachers still searching for employment and answers? Might the state government consider listening to their concerns and addressing them? The 2014 High Court verdict clearly stated that the state government must run a fresh recruitment drive and complete it before 31 December 2014. The state government did not. The Supreme Court Bench upheld the High Court’s verdict in 2017 but asked the state government to complete a fresh recruitment drive by 31 March 2020. Once again, the government failed to do so. 

Those once entrusted with shaping Tripura’s future generations are now nowhere in the conversation. They have been quietly erased, not just from their jobs, but from the state’s conscience, too. Ten years is a long time to wait for justice. Can the state government secure the state’s future by acknowledging and addressing its past oversight? Can it find a solution closer to home instead of searching elsewhere?

(The author is an independent researcher and writer)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.