The SSA teachers’ regularization issue is steadily turning into a hot potato for the state government.
Even as the state government failed to implement the High Court of Tripura order for the regularization a teacher filed a Contempt petition at the High Court of Tripura. The case will come up for hearing on Monday at the Division Bench of Chief Justice AA Kureshi and Justice SG Chottopadhyaya. The dateline the High Court had earlier fixed for their regularization was August 22 last, but the state cabinet did not take any decision in this regard.
The case has been listed as Sajal Deb vs Soumya Gupta and others. Gupta is secretary to the Education department.
The state cabinet though met several times after the High Court verdict skipped the matter. The issue became a matter of serious discussions as the in the cabinet meeting –which was also the last before the High Court fixed dateline ended- failed to take any decision.
It was widely alleged and reported in the media that though Education Minister Ratan Lal Nath was keen to get the SSA teachers regularized as per the BJP’s election promises as well as after the High Court’s clear order, Soumya Gupta as a secretary threw a spanner into the matter and, in fact, as alleged in the media reporting did not even put up the matter in the last cabinet agenda for discussion-ignoring even the education minister. Gupta drew flak from various quarters including media for her unexplained intransigence in blocking the SSA teachers’ regularization. As a bureaucrat, understandably, she does have limitations to explain her position in the public , but intriguingly there was also no words from either the political circle or from the Education minister himself in this regard. They all kept conspicuous silence on this.
Earlier, High Court’s verdict was clear about the regularization of the SSA teachers. Besides, the financial support for the regularization was also reported to have been received from the centre.
Senior Lawyer Somik Deb and his juniors will be appearing for the petitioners.
