Agartala, October 16: After more than 24 hours of sit-in and hunger strike, Tripura TET-1-qualified candidates withdrew their agitation outside Shiksha Bhavan in Agartala on Friday, following a meeting with Teachers’ Recruitment Board, Tripura (TRBT) chairman Pruthush Ranjan Deb.
The candidates said the chairman had assured their representatives that they would not be deprived of jobs and that the board would make efforts to publish the merit and recommendation lists by November-December, subject to the resolution of legal hurdles.
The protesters, who had been demanding clarity on the recruitment process for Undergraduate Teachers (UGT), said they were suspending further agitation in view of the assurance.
The candidates said they had also drawn hope from Chief Minister Manik Saha’s recent remarks that the recruitment issue would be addressed after the pending court proceedings were resolved.
One of the candidates, Nikita Gope, said the aspirants had earlier misunderstood the board’s position and believed that protests would help them obtain a definite answer. She said they now understood that the recruitment process was entangled in judicial proceedings and that appointments made before the legal issues were resolved could face further challenges.
“We have full faith in the TRBT and are hopeful that something positive will happen. The board has assured us that we will not be excluded from recruitment,” she said.
Gope said the candidates had been told that their case would be dealt with separately from another group of nine candidates and that the matter would proceed through the appropriate legal process, including possible proceedings before a division bench of the High Court.
She said the aspirants would not resume their agitation and hoped the board would publish the merit list at the earliest.
Another candidate, Iqbal Hossain, said the group comprised around 100 aspirants who had qualified in TET-1 under the 2024 notification but had remained without recruitment for nearly two years.
He said the candidates were distressed after the UGT merit and recommendation lists were not published along with other recruitment lists on October 9. They had approached the authorities seeking clarification but, according to him, had not received a satisfactory explanation earlier.
Hossain said the candidates had remained outside Shiksha Bhavan since Thursday morning and spent the night there during their agitation.
He said the chairman assured their delegation that the board would try to complete the process and publish the merit and recommendation lists within November-December.
The candidates also appealed to the TRBT chairman to excuse any misunderstanding or mistakes on their part during the agitation, saying an earlier clarification of the legal position might have prevented them from resorting to a hunger strike.
They said they were withdrawing all protest programmes and would wait for the board to act on its assurance.
The assurance and the proposed timeline were reported by the candidates after their meeting with the TRBT chairman. The board’s independent confirmation of the commitment was not available.
