MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court allowed a petition filed by a Madurai-based law graduate seeking direction to a college to issue ‘Persons Studied in Tamil Medium’ (PSTM) certificate within two weeks.
The petitioner A B Jeeva submitted that he had completed five-year integrated law degree course in the year 2017 at the Government Law College, Madurai, under Tamil medium category. However, despite him taking all lectures in Tamil language and also writing the exams in Tamil throughout his course period, he was not issued a PSTM certificate by the college. Even the Transfer Certificate (TC) given to him wrongly stated that he had studied in English medium, Jeeva added.
Following this, Jeeva filed an RTI application on July 11, 2017, seeking a copy of his admission card and had also sent a representation to the college authorities on August 11 seeking PSTM certificate. But it was rejected by the college on grounds that Tamil medium of instruction in the college had already been discontinued during 2012-13.
Aggrieved by the order, Jeeva approached the Court seeking direction to issue the certificate. Hearing the plea, Justice V Parthiban, took note of a previous order passed by a division bench of the same Court in a similar case to a person who also completed the course in the same academic year as the petitioner.
The division bench ruled in favour of the petitioner by observing that the arbitrary withdrawal and reintroduction of Tamil medium could not be at the whim of the college and ought to have been reflected at least in the college prospectus. Considering that the petitioner also suffered from the same issue, the Judge allowed the petition by directing the college to issue the PSTM certificate to the petitioner within two weeks.