The Madras High Court on Monday gave relief to students of linguistic minorities by granting them exemption from writing the Tamil paper in their class 10 board examinations till 2022.
Allowing the petitions of several linguistic minority schools, a Bench comprising Justices S. Manikumar, Abdul Quddhose, and Subramonium Prasad granted the relief.
It did not, however, quash a government order dated September 18, 2014 bringing all the schools in the State under the purview of the Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act, 2006, which makes Tamil paper compulsory in class 10 board exam.
Compulsory from 2023
As a result, from 2023 linguistic minority students would also have to write the compulsory Tamil paper.
When the plea came up for hearing, senior counsel appearing for the schools, M. Ravindran explained that though a legislation making Tamil paper compulsory was enacted in 2006, it was brought into force only in 2014.
The schools were informed about the decision only in June that year. Till 2014, the government had not appointed Tamil teachers in schools to teach Tamil and only after writ petitions were filed, the government started appointing Tamil teachers, Mr. Ravindran added.
‘More time needed’
Since Tamil was completely new to schools where the medium of instruction was the mother tongue of the children, he said some more time must be given to the institutions to comply with the law.