CHENNAI: Holding that the court should not poke its nose to a policy decision taken by the state government, the Madras High Court has dismissed a batch of writ petitions challenging the procedure adopted for promoting class 10 students without writing the final public exam.

By the government orders passed on June 9 and 11, the School Education department said all class 10 students would be declared pass without writing the exam due to the lockdown. The marks obtained in the quarterly and half-yearly exams and the attendance would be taken into consideration for this purpose, the GOs, which are sought to be set aside, said.

The petitioners prayed for a direction to the department to adopt a just and proper method for assessing and awarding final marks scored by them in the public exam and issue the mark sheets to them.

Dismissing the petitions, Justice N Anand Venkatesh said that the government has thought it fit to adopt a particular method of awarding marks to the students in the 10th standard public examination. While doing so, the government has to take into consideration the overall interest of the students.

The court observed that it may be possible that some of the students are not happy with the method suggested by the government or it is also possible that there are some alternative or effective methods available to award marks to the students. The court said this by itself cannot be a ground for it to interfere with the decision taken by the government. These are areas which should be safely left within the domain of governance and the courts must be very slow to interfere with such decisions, the order said.

If the court is satisfied that the move by the government is not arbitrary, irrational or is not actuated by bias or malice, it should not poke its nose into a policy decision, said the order. "In the considered view of this court, the method adopted by the government does not fall within any of these categories. Therefore, this court is not inclined to interfere with the GOs," the order said.