The Tripura government Saturday decided to appeal to the Supreme Court against the Tripura High Court judgment Wednesday on terminating jobs of 10,323 government school teachers, Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said.
A division bench of the Tripura High Court comprising of Chief Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice Swapan Chandra Das also asked the state government to arrange a fresh recruitment process by December 2014 and to frame a new employment policy within two months.
"The government has today (Saturday) decided to file a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court challenging the high court order," Sarkar told reporters after a two-hour meeting of state cabinet.
State Advocate General Bijan Chandra Das and law secretary Datamohan Jamatia briefed the cabinet about the judgment at the urgently called meeting.
The court, after hearing the state government and the complainants, Wednesday passed the order on a batch of 58 petitions filed by those who had failed to secure government teachers' jobs.
Tripura's Left Front government recruited 1,100 post-graduate, 4,617 graduate in 2010 and 4,606 under-graduate teachers in December last year.
"The chief minister, and Education and Law Minister Tapan Chakraborty have held a series of meetings with the officials and legal experts in the past three days to study the scope of filing a petition in the apex court against the high court judgment," a top law department official told IANS, declining to be named.
The main opposition parties, including the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and the Trinamool Congress, welcomed the court's verdict and sought fresh recruitment process. They also demanded resignation of the chief minister.
Chakraborty said the government would stand by the teachers whose jobs have been put at stake.
Meanwhile, the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has urged the high court to review its judgment on humanitarian ground.
"The court judgment cancelling the jobs of 10,323 school teachers is unprecedented, unfortunate and inhuman. It has snatched the livelihood of 50,000 families. The opposition parties have expressed joy over the decision of the court," CPI-M state secretary Bijan Dhar told reporters.
