Agartala: The Tripura government will file a special leave petition (SLP) with the Supreme Court, seeking job extension of 10,323 schoolteachers till 2020.

The teachers were terminated by the apex court's previous verdict in March 2017. The teachers lost their jobs owing to faults of the erstwhile Left Front government, education minister Ratan Lal Nath said at a news conference at the state secretariat here on Thursday.

He said a meeting of the state cabinet decided to file the SLP, seeking extension of the service tenure of these teachers till June 30, 2020, since there is severe scarcity of teachers across 4,928 government schools.

According to the Supreme Court verdict, the service tenure of 10,323 teachers ended on December 31, 2017. Recruitment rules followed to induct them were termed "unconstitutional" by the apex court.

The erstwhile Left Front government later decided to recruit them in ad hoc positions for six months from January 1. Their new service tenure will end on June 30. "We have only 40,658 teachers for 7.29 lakh students in 4,928 schools. This is a tough matter. But we shall seek permission from the Supreme Court so that we can use their service for some more time," Nath said.

Shortly after the BJP-IPFT government assumed office on March 9, a notification inviting applications in 12,222 teaching positions had been issued. Nath said, "We did not get enough qualified candidates yet."

Earlier on April 20, chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb sought the Prime Minister's intervention to grant one-time relaxation in educational and professional qualifications for teachers.

Altogether 6,864 teachers are estimated to retire in the next six years.

The education minister said his government will do "everything necessary" to ensure quality teachers.