TN firm on compulsory Tamil for school students

Tamil Nadu Government today indicated there would be no change in Tamil being a compulsory language in the syllabus for all school students from Class I to X as mandated by a law.
During a debate on grant for School Education in the Assembly, MMK member M H Jawahirullah suggested linguistic minority students studying in the state may be exempted from studying Tamil language paper.
He said they may appear for functional Tamil as part I and their respective minority language for part II, notwithstanding the Tamil Learning Act, 2006.
School Education Minister K C Veeramani said there was an act enacted for the specific purpose of all students learning Tamil and all communities must follow it.

He further explained that other minority languages like Urdu, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam are also being taught as per the students' preference.
Leader of the House and Finance Minister O Panneerselvam intervened to say, "Why is that you all want to learn the minority language at the place of Tamil, while we have kept all those languages as a separate paper."
"It is sad that minority language students who live in the state are not wanting to learn Tamil. They are being admitted with reservations in education as well as in employment. This is very sad. It would be good if you advice those students to learn Tamil.