CHENNAI: A public interest litigation (PIL) petition has been filed in the Madras High Court seeking to quash a 2024 GO issued by the school education department that permitted implementing the Tamil Learning Act in a phased manner, thereby providing relaxation to CBSE schools from compulsorily teaching the Tamil language.
Pirmanayagam Avudaiyappan, a Tamil writer from Delhi, who filed the petition, sought the court to declare ultra vires the December 31, 2024 GO, which according to him allowed the relaxation to CBSE, ICSE, ICGSE and IB boards, defeats the legislative intent of making learning of Tamil compulsory for all students from classes 1 to 10.
The relaxation provided for students of these boards is creating an unfair disparity between them and students of government schools with English as medium of instruction and Tamil as second language, violating the principles of equality enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution, the counsel for the petitioner said when the petition came up for hearing on Tuesday.
However, the first bench of the HC questioned the basis of the plea and directed the counsel to produce copies of the judgments of the Supreme Court cited by the counsel in favour of the petitioner.
It asked the counsel to explain how the GO is bad in law and observed that there should be the option for giving relaxation if it is permissible under the relevant law.
It also asked how the children of migrant workers or central government employees could be forced to learn the language and stated that there must be scope for giving the relaxation. The court adjourned the matter to September 25.