Tripura’s teacher eligibility test is meant to be the beginning of a career, not the start of a long wait. Yet candidates who qualified the test say they have waited more than a year for recruitment. In September, protesting aspirants said about 40,000 candidates sat the exam and 1,856 qualified. They gave the government a week to complete appointments and threatened to march to the Chief Minister’s residence. Since then, reports say the Chief Minister, Manik Saha, appealed to TET Paper-I candidates, promised action, and the protest was withdrawn. Former chief minister Manik Sarkar has backed the aspirants and urged the government to hold talks.
The government’s case deserves a hearing. Mr Saha has said that the department has been instructed to act on the examinations and pending recruitments, that qualified candidates “shall definitely get jobs” based on eligibility rather than participation in protests, and that appointments must withstand legal challenge. He has also said the government has provided 21,000 to 22,000 permanent jobs in eight years, many of them in teaching, and has cited financial constraints. The aspirants’ own claims, including that the Teachers’ Recruitment Board has lost court cases that delayed hiring, are their assertions and have not been independently verified.
That is exactly why a clear timetable is needed. Qualified candidates are not asking for a favour; they are asking for a process to finish. A recruitment cycle that is repeatedly stalled by litigation raises doubts about the quality of the process, whichever side is right. Schools suffer when posts are vacant, and young people lose years of earning and confidence.
We urge the state government to do four things. First, publish the number of vacancies in each category and the expected date for appointments. Second, explain publicly what legal issues are pending and what the board is doing to resolve them. Third, hold the meeting with aspirants that they say they were denied, so that grievances are heard before they reach the street. Fourth, make sure the question papers and rules are reviewed so that future examinations do not end up in court for avoidable reasons.
Protest, as the Chief Minister suggests, should not be the route to a job. But that argument only works when the system itself is trusted to deliver. Tripura’s classrooms need teachers, and its young graduates need certainty. A date, written and kept, would serve both.