Police action on terminated teachers spread tension across Tripura

Agartala:With the mounting tension across the state among 10,323 terminated teachers and their family and relatives after police action on their agitation, the home department of Tripura alerted all eight district police authorities to be vigilant over any gathering of those teachers or any move.

After a series of clashes between police and the agitating terminated teachers, West Tripura district administration has extended 144 of CrPC for another 48 hrs from this morning prohibiting the association of five or more persons. The state police have allegedly pressurised the agitating teachers and persecuted the leaders in false cases.

However, the protesters threatened to resort to extreme steps if their demand for alternative livelihood is not assured as committed by the Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb in October last year. They also criticised the government for mobilising police against them and alleged policemen have outraged the modesty of female teachers yesterday in public.

According to report, since yesterday morning there was a scuffle between police and agitating teachers at least for four times till evening, which left as many as 107 people including 23 security personnel and six pedestrians injured while three police vehicles were damaged in the courter attack of protesters.

Police sources said that the administration has undertaken several measures to prevent the meeting of the terminated teachers. All the police stations were asked to keep a close vigil over the movement of sacked teachers of their jurisdiction. Security surveillance has been beefed up in railway stations and bus terminus apprehending the assembly of the victim teachers in the city from different parts of the state.

Security has been tightened in Directorate of School Education, secretariat, ministers’ quarter complex and the house of education minister since last night. Extra forces have been deployed across the city to monitor the attempt of any re-assembly of the agitating teachers. All 153 teachers who were detained from the agitation tent yesterday morning for unlawful assembly still remained in the camps.

The protesting teachers, however, alleged that police implicated false cases against their leaders and hatched a conspiracy to put them in jail for a long time to destabilise the movement. The BJP cadres have allegedly been directly threatening the retrenched teachers in their locality to refrain from the agitation and not to speak against the government, they alleged.

“We shall not stop until our demand is fulfilled because none of us did any mistake by joining in the service. If anything went wrong in the recruitment policy we are not responsible. Our appointment was as per the procedure of the government; even the Supreme Court also agreed to it. So, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure livelihood for all of us,” said Rajesh Das, a victim teacher.

He further pointed out that as many as 84 of retrenched teacher died either committing suicide due to frustration after losing a job or without treatment after suffering from critical illness due to poverty so far. If the government doesn't do anything, most of the jobless teachers have to die only with their family members.(UNI)