Supreme Court Revives Scrapped TSR Recruitment, Calls State’s Move Arbitrary

• By Thetripurapost Desk, New Delhi
• Aug 30, 2025
• 608

The Supreme Court has struck down the Tripura government’s decision to cancel midway the recruitment of 506 Enrolled Followers in the Tripura State Rifles (TSR), terming it an “arbitrary exercise of power” and unlawful change of “rules of the game after the game had begun.”

The process, initiated in 2016 under the Tripura State Rifles Act, 1983 and Recruitment Rules, 1984, had gone through rallies, physical tests, written exams and interviews, with merit lists prepared by mid-2017. However, after a new government assumed office in March 2018, the recruitment was first suspended and later scrapped under a New Recruitment Policy (NRP) that abolished interviews for Group-D posts.

Justice J.K. Maheshwari, writing for the bench, ruled that executive instructions such as the NRP cannot override statutory rules, which specifically mandated interviews for these posts. The Court added that the NRP was meant to apply prospectively, not to an ongoing process where interviews had already been conducted.

Rejecting the state’s claim of acting in “larger public interest,” the bench observed that candidates may not have an absolute right to appointment but do have a legitimate expectation that recruitment processes will be completed fairly and without arbitrariness.

The Court quashed both the March 14, 2018 Abeyance Memorandum and the August 20, 2018 Cancellation Memorandum, directing the state to finalize and complete the TSR recruitment process within two months.

The verdict restores hope for hundreds of aspirants who cleared the rigorous tests nearly eight years ago and sets a precedent reinforcing that recruitment rules framed under law cannot be altered mid-process by shifting executive policies.