The Madras High Court has held that the State government cannot be heard to claim it would exempt schoolchildren from taking the examination in Tamil language paper in Class 10 only if they have not studied Tamil as a medium of instruction over a period of three years.
A Division Bench of Justices C.T. Selvam and M.V. Muralidaran said such a stand taken by the government would amount to negating Section 5 of the Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act of 2006 which empowers the government to exempt any class or category of student from all or any of the provisions of the Act.
The judges made the observation while dismissing a review application preferred by the State government against an order passed by them in November last directing the School Education Department to grant exemption to some private school students from writing a paper in Tamil language during the Class 10 public examinations to be held in March this year. Then, the judge held that the exemption need not be restricted only to students who got admitted in Classes 9 and 10 in schools in Tamil Nadu after migrating from other States but also those who had been admitted in much lower classes, such as Class 8, in a private school at Yercaud in Salem district.
The order was passed on a writ petition filed by Montford Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School at Yercaud. The school had claimed that the education department had granted exemption to only six of its students though 33 of them required such exemption on account of their difficulty in learning Tamil. Stating that many such children who got admitted in Class 8, three years ago after migrating from other States, too were about to take their Class 10 examinations in March this year, the school insisted on granting exemption to them too.
Finding force in its submissions, the judges allowed the writ petition and directed the officials concerned to reconsider a request made by the school seeking exemption under Section 5 of the Act.
The Bench passed a similar order on another writ petition filed by an individual student G. Maheswari who had migrated along with her mother from Vijayawada to Chennai in 2015 following her father’s death and joined in Class 8 in Badankanwar Chainmal Surana Jain Matriculation Higher Secondary School at Old Washermanpet here.
The State had preferred the present review application against the orders passed in both the writ petitions.
