HC direction to AG on advising TN govt on Tamil paper issue

The Madras High Court has directed the Advocate General R. Muthukumaraswamy to advise the state government to consider and pass orders exempting students who have not had an opportunity to study Tamil for at least three years in respect of appearing for Board exams.
"Advocate General assures that he will advice the Government to pass orders addressing the concerns of the Court for students who have not had an opportunity to study Tamil for at least three years, in respect of appearing for the Board Examination," the First Bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. Sundar, said last week.

The court was hearing a batch of petitions seeking granting of exemption to students studying in linguistic minority schools from writing the Tamil Language Papers in the 10th Standard Public Examination.
Earlier on January 25, the court had exempted about 7000 students who had sought exemption from writing the Tamil Language Paper for the academic year 2015-16.
Senior Counsel and former Additional Solicitor General M Ravindran, who appeared on behalf of various Linguistic Minority Institutions, submitted that in the guise of Education Policy, government was playing with children's lives.
After hearing the submissions, the Bench passed the above order and posted the matter for further hearing to January 3.

The matter relates to making Tamil Language Paper compulsory for all which was challenged by various Linguistic Minority Schools including Linguistic minorities' forum of Tamil Nadu.