The Madras High Court on Friday stayed the operation of an amendment to the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education Act indefinitely postponing the implementation of the “Samacheer Kalvi Thittam (uniform system of education) introduced by the previous DMK regime.
In its order on miscellaneous petitions in writ petitions pertaining to the uniform education scheme, the First Bench comprising the Chief Justice M.Y. Eqbal and Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, said for Standards I and VI under the scheme, the syllabus, which came into effect from 2010-11, would continue.
For other classes — Standards II to V and VII to X — the new syllabus, which was to come into effect from this academic year, would be implemented.
However, the court made it clear that the stay of the amendment to Section 3 of the Act should not be a bar for the Tamil Nadu government to conduct a detailed study of the common syllabus and common textbooks.
The government was entitled to delete, add, modify, substitute or alter any chapter, paragraphs, portion of the textbook, including propagation of the achievement of a political party or an individual.
“At this stage, we are constrained to observe that the government should avoid including any chapter in any of the textbooks with intent to propagate a particular political party or an individual.”
As private managements had stated there were several books of high standard the government should approve them as per the direction of the Division Bench (which upheld the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education Act).
As schools should be given option to choose either the government prescribed textbooks or government approved textbooks, the Bench said the managements could submit the book list for government approval.
The government should conduct a detailed study of such books and take a decision in the matter to comply with the Division Bench's direction.
The Bench said no material was placed before it to say that the new textbooks under the uniform syllabus were either wholly erroneous or incorrect.
In any event, these were matters to be decided by experts in the respective fields.
It was not disputed that a substantial amount of public money (Rs. 200 crore) had been spent for preparing the new syllabus and printing nearly 9 crore textbooks.
The Bench allowed the impleading petitions.
The parties and the State government should file their counter affidavit in the writ petitions filed for declaring the amendment ultra vires.
