New Delhi, Sept 24: In a matter which could have a bearing on the policy of state governments in promoting regional languages, the supreme court today asked Maharashtra to clarify its stand regarding its policy decision to make Marathi a compulsory language in school education Hearing petitions by linguistic minority communities challenging the decision to make Marathi a compulsory subject for students of class five onwards, a bench comprising Justice M B Shah, Justice A R Lakshmanan and Justice G P Mathur gave three weeks time to the state government to file its response. The bench said pursuant to a 1996 interim order of the court, the state government had amended its policy and allowed the minority linguistic community to study their language along with Marathi. It asked the counsel for Maharashtra to state whether the amended policy was to be followed by the state government or it wanted to pursue its Marathi compulsory policy.


Appearing for the petitioners, advocate Jatin Javeri pointed out that the grievance of the linguistic minority was that in English medium schools, the minority community students as per the policy decision were required to forego their mother tongue and take up Marathi.

The Bombay High Court had upheld the policy decision saying the Marathi compulsory policy was uniformly enforced in English medium schools.
Bureau Report