A bench of Acting Chief Justice (ACJ) M N Bhandari and Justice PD Audikesvalu said this when a PIL seeking full implementation of the New Education Policy 2020 of the Union government came before it today.
The petition by Arjunan Alayaraja, secretary of Alamram, an NGO in Cuddalore district, sought a direction to the authorities concerned to implement the NEP in Tamil Nadu with necessary modifications by adjusting the Supreme Court’s suggestions in various cases on the issue. Do it.
Citing a few instances in which qualified persons from Tamil Nadu lost the opportunity to get jobs in North India due to lack of Hindi knowledge, the Acting Chief Justice observed, “There is no difficulty in getting a job in the state of Tamil Nadu. Because the candidates are well versed in the local language (Tamil), but outside the state they will face difficulty.
When Advocate General R Shanmugasundaram replied that everyone in the state was free to learn Hindi through institutions like Hindi Prachar Sabha, the ACJ said that ‘learning’ is different from ‘teaching’.
When Shanmugasundaram mentioned that the state was following a two-language system (Tamil and English) as a policy, the ACJ questioned what would be the harm if Hindi was introduced in the three-language policy? The AG replied that it would put ‘more pressure’ on the students. However, the ACJ said that the matter is only to give the option of choosing the languages.
The ACJ said, “Tamil and English are already there. I think adding a third language (Hindi) will not be harmful.
He accepted the PIL and ordered the concerned authorities to issue notices to which they would have to respond within eight weeks.
