NEW DELHI: After failing to get response to its RTI query, the Delhi Tamil Students’ Association (DTSA) will be appealing to the Central Information Commission for information on which grounds Delhi University takes a compulsory Hindi test for under-graduate students.The University of Delhi (DU) has made it compulsory for the students, who have not studied Hindi after 8th grade in school, to pass a Compulsory Test Hindi (CTH).
“It is a central university, where students come from various parts of the country to get quality education. For most of its students, those who are from Tamil Nadu and Kerala or from the Northeast, Hindi is not their first language,” DTSA president Sharavena told this newspaper. “The policy of the university to make it compulsory to study Hindi for those students who don’t speak that language is a clear discrimination on the basis of language prohibited under Article 29 (2) of the Constitution,” Sharavena said.
The DTSA president will seek information related to the compulsory test - records pertaining to CTH, including the Rules, Ordinance, etc; minutes of the governing body meeting wherein Compulsory Test Hindi was approved and made mandatory. The petition will question why are Northeast students exempted from Compulsory Test Hindi . Sharavena said it is “unfair” that the exemption was not extended to students from the South.
Sharavena said the compulsory test “has nothing to do with our course.” “If the university is still keen on taking a test, they should at least provide us with teachers to guide us through it. Students take help from their seniors and blindly go and write the exam,” he stressed.
In December last year, he said, the students approached the High Court, seeking exemption from the test.
“The court said it wasn’t authorised to declare an exemption. It said that we should rather challenge the test. Hence, we filed RTIs to find about the ordinance through which the test is being conducted,” he added.