Plea Challenging Compulsory Tamil Subject In Class 10 : Supreme Court Grants Last Opportunity To TN Govt To File Counter

On Tuesday, as the matter was called out, the Counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner organisation, Linguistic Minorities Forum of Tamil Nadu, apprised the Bench comprising Justice S.K. Kaul and Justice A.S. Oka that the State Government had circulated an adjournment letter in the matter. On perusing its orders, the Bench noted that it had previously granted time to the State Government to file its counter affidavit. Thereafter, it granted the last opportunity to the State of Tamil Nadu to file its counter affidavit within 3 weeks and directed the matter to be next listed on 30th January, 2023.

The Madras High Court had exempted students belonging to linguistic minority schools from writing Tamil language papers in Class 10 State Board Examination for the academic year 2020-2022. It appears that the plea by the petitioner organisation was preferred before the Supreme Court once the exemption came to an end.

The plea submits that though the petitioner organisation had accepted that it would teach Tamil language to its students, the State Government has taken an extreme step of removing all minority languages from the list of compulsory languages. It emphasises that the languages which have been removed are the mother tongues of the linguistic minorities and the deprivation from learning the same is in teeth of their fundamental right envisaged by the Constitution of India. The plea further argues that the State Government cannot infringe fundamental rights of the students as per their whims and fancies. It also contends that the right to choose language at the primary and secondary level should be left to the student and their parents, otherwise it would be a blatant violation of their rights under Articles 19, 21A, 29 and 30 of the Constitution of India.

[Case Title: Linguistic Minorities Forum of Tamil Nadu v. State of Tamil Nadu And Ors. SLP(C) No. 16727-16728/2022]