The Madras High Court on Wednesday, December 21 directed the Tamil Nadu government to file a report on the status of implementation of Tamil as compulsory subject in classes up to Class X as per the Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act, 2006.
The first bench of Acting Chief Justice T Raja and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy also directed the government to file the report by two weeks and adjourned the PIL petition filed by S Raghavan of Chennai, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.
The petitioner stated the Act came into force on June 19, 2006. Tamil language was introduced as a compulsory subject in Class I in 2006-07 and was to be extended every year to the other classes in a phased manner till 2015-16 upto Class X.
Saying that there were lacunae in implementing the Act that makes Tamil compulsory even for CBSE and ICSE schools, as per the undertaking given before the court, the petitioner noted that out of the nine lakh students who appeared for Class X public examination in 2021-22, 47,055 of them, could not score pass marks in the subject.
He said other states, including Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Punjab have been strictly implementing the Act while the Tamil Nadu government has not incorporated penal sections in the Act for taking action against those schools which do not teach the subject. He sought the court to order the government to file a status report after inspecting the schools across the state.
