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
