The Supreme Court of India has revived over 8,500 government job posts in Tripura, ruling that the state government cannot abruptly cancel recruitment processes that were already underway and replace them with new policies.
The verdict, delivered on August 30, 2025, is a major relief for thousands of unemployed youth in the state who had been waiting since 2018 for their appointments.
A bench of Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice Rajesh Bindal observed that recruitment cannot be treated like a game where rules are changed once play has started. The court stated that recruitment drives launched under existing laws cannot be stopped without valid and lawful reasons, and political decisions cannot override fairness.
Most of the affected recruitments had started during the Left Front government. These included the TCS/TPS examinations, Inspector of Boilers posts, and the Tripura State Rifles (TSR) Enrolled Followers recruitment. In several cases, candidates had already been selected and were only waiting for formal appointment when the change of government in 2018 halted the process.
After coming to power on March 9, 2018, the BJP-led government suspended all ongoing recruitments and, by August that year, cancelled them entirely while introducing a new recruitment policy. This decision left thousands of aspirants in limbo and led to years of legal battles that finally reached the Supreme Court.
In its ruling, the court directed the state government to complete the pending recruitment processes within strict deadlines:
- TCS/TPS recruitment must be completed within four months.
- Inspector of Boilers recruitment must be finalized within two months.
- TSR Enrolled Followers recruitment, which had already selected 506 candidates, must also be completed within two months.
The bench also ruled that applying the new National Recruitment Policy retrospectively to these recruitments was unlawful and unfair.
The judgment has brought renewed hope to thousands of young job seekers in Tripura. For many, this verdict restores not only stalled opportunities but also faith in the fairness of the system. The state government is now bound to complete the recruitments transparently and within the timeline set by the apex court.