CHENNAI: Granting an exemption, the Madras High Court has ordered the Tamil Nadu school education department to allow a Class X student to take the public examinations with French as part I language in the current academic year since the student has not studied Tamil or Hindi.
Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy passed the orders recently on a petition filed by the student, J Joseph Samuel, studying in a private school in Vellore.
The boy had studied up to Class VIII under the CBSE curriculum in a school in Vellore and later he was admitted to the state board in another school in Class IX. The child speaks Hindi at home as his mother had to be in Kashmir due to the vocation of his grandfather. He had not learnt Tamil or Hindi as part I language in CBSE but studied French as the only language from Class VI. The petition was filed after the authorities concerned rejected the request of the school to permit the boy to take the public exams with French as the second language and without Tamil or any of the Indian languages.
Stating that the 2017 and 2018 GOs relating to learning Tamil as a subject do not entitle the boy for exemption, the judge held that Section 5 of the Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act empowers the government to issue a special or general order exempting any class or category of students from the provisions of the Act either in part or whole.
“Thus, every peculiar situation will not be known at the stage of framing rules or issuing government orders. Various fact situations present themselves subsequently before this court and therefore, depending on the situation and considering the extraordinary facts, relief can be granted,” the judge said in the order.
He ordered the authorities to issue an order within three weeks and directed the private school to pay Rs 10,000 – for knowingly admitting the student with risk of ineligibility – and to not make any similar admissions in the future. The judge made it clear that the present order of exemption shall not entitle the student to pursue Class XI or XII, in which Tamil or any other mother tongue is second or third language in respective streams.