New Delhi, Nov 25: The Supreme Court today asked the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu to be personally present before it on December nine to explain lapses in filing of the state's response about implementation of a 1991 court order directing inclusion of environment as a subject in educational syllabi. A bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde and Justice B P Singh passed this order noticing certain contradictory statements made by the state government in taking exemption from filing the affidavit by the deadline set by the court.
The court on September 22 had imposed a fine of Rs 15,000 each on ten states for not responding to a court's notice on a petition filed by environmentalist lawyer MC Mehta alleging they failed to comply with a 12-year-old order for compulsory education on environment in schools and colleges.
Taking serious view of lapses in compliance of its judgement to make environment studies a compulsory subject at all levels of education, the court had on July 21 issued notices to the states, union territories and apex education bodies responsible for prescribing syllabus throughout the country.
Almost all the states in their affidavit said that they have complied with the November 22, 1991 direction of the apex court to include environment as a subject in the school and college syllabi and expressed regret that they had not reported back to the court in this regard.
Bureau Report