AGARTALA, November 6 (TIWN Exclusive): Even after repeated suggestions from the experts, State Govt still acted as per its own employment policy while recruiting 10323 teachers. As expected on May 7, 2014, Division Bench of High Court headed by Chief Justice Deepak Kumar Gupta and Justice Swapan Ch Das terminated jobs of 10323 teachers and declared the recruitment policy of the State Govt is unconstitutional. Accordingly, State Govt filed a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court challenging the HCs verdict. Now eyeing that, Supreme Court may retain the HCs decision regarding 10323 teachers’ jobs, State Govt sent its senior officials to Delhi couple of times to discuss the matter with some senior advocates of Supreme Court. But it is learnt that State Govt did not get any positive response from anyone. Under these circumstances of suspense and imminent legal defeat, State Govt was compelled to make its new employment policy and till date it is being kept a secret.

On wednesday night, a high level official of the state Govt said that during the term of 13th Finance Commission state govt did a hara-kiri(suicide) and the result is known to all. Even before HC ruling, govt was acting in the same direction and it would surely lead to another financial crisis during14th Finance Commission. State employees are indeed extremely unhappy with the state govt. And the HC judgment in teachers jobs case  came as a severe blow for the govt. After the lapse of much time state govt ultimately decided to frame its new recruitment policy. The official said," Law Secretary Data Mohan Jamatia met a couple of senior advocates of Supreme Court several times. After carefully examining the HC order the advocates framed a draft for New Recruitment policy. And without any alteration and modification state govt too asked senior officials to prepare the New Recruitment Policy as suggested by the advocates. Accordingly the General Administration (GA) made the draft and sent the file for the approval of the cabinet. It is expected that cabinet will soon approve the file."

 A highly placed source in the State Secretariat informed TIWN about the salient features of the New Recruitment Rules. Some of these are given bellow:-

1) For any kind of recruitment in UGT teachers minimum qualification will be Higher Secondary pass with minimum  50% marks in aggregate.

2) For  Post Graduate and  Graduate Teachers 2 years BEd is essential

3) No leniency will be shown in qualification as fat as PGT,GT and UGT are  concerned

4) There will be no provision for 70% merit and 30% need.

5) Entire process of recruitment of will be purely on the basis of merit

6) Teachers Eligibility Test(TET) will be compulsory

From this draft it is clear that the state govt has accepted all the proposals made by the High Court .But at present it seems if the draft is finalized then majority of UGT teachers will lose their jobs. Many of the UGT teachers did not have H S Qualification and 50% marks is a 'Day Dream'. The question is why has the state govt bent down?