The Madras High Court has closed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition that sought a direction to the State government to remove caste names prefixed and suffixed to the names of government and government-aided educational institutions in the State.
The First Bench of Chief Justice S.K. Kaul and Justice R. Mahadevan directed the petitioner, S. Saravanan, to make a representation to the relevant department of the State government on the issue. When the plea came up for hearing, the authorities submitted that the aided private colleges were solely maintained by educational agencies of that college and most of them were minority institutions. The government was in no way involved in the process of naming of aided colleges. The government was not running any college under a particular caste / community name.
Counsel for the petitioner drew the court’s attention to a list of schools that are stated to be government schools with caste names.
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The Bench said, “If the petitioner is of the view on inquiry that these are all government schools, he may address a communication to the relevant department.”