The Supreme Court on Thursday granted a two-year service extension to more than 10,000 government teachers in Tripura whose contracts had been terminated last year, The Indian Express reported.

Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices UU Lalit and Kurien Joseph issued the order after hearing the state government’s petition, said Tripura Law Secretary Datamohan Jamatia.

“The apex court has accepted our petition to extend the ad-hoc engagement tenure of these school teachers till June 30, 2020,” said Jamatia. “The state government was also asked to submit details of the action taken to publicise its scheme of sponsorship in B.Ed [Bachelor of Education] and D.El.Ed [Diploma in Elementary Education] courses to hire new eligible candidates for filling up vacant positions.”

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In March 2017, the top court upheld a Tripura High Court verdict cancelling the contracts of 10,323 teachers at the undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate levels. The court said the state government had not followed recruitment procedures to fill up the positions. After the previous Left Front government appealed against the order, the Supreme Court extended the affected teachers’ services till June. In May, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government submitted a petition in the Supreme Court, seeking to extend their services till 2020.

The Supreme Court will hold a review hearing of affidavits of both the state and central governments after four months.

Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb welcomed the top court’s decision. “We are expecting that the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development will very soon give the one-time relaxation in academic and other qualifications to facilitate recruitment of teachers to overcome the huge shortages of teachers,” IANS quoted him as saying.

But Communist Party of India (Marxist) State Secretary Bijan Dhar called the court order a “temporary relief”. “It is not a permanent solution,” he said. “The 10,323 teachers deserve a permanent solution.”