SC dismisses TN Govt's plea to scrap uniform education system

New Delhi, Aug 9 (PTI) In a setback to the Jayalalithaa
government in south Indian state Tamil Nadu, the Indian
Supreme Court Tuesday rejected its plea for scrapping the
uniform education system brought in by the earlier Dravida
Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) government and directed its immediate
implementation.
A three-judge bench of justices J M Panchal, Deepak Verma
and B S Chauhan dismissed the state's plea that the Uniform
System of School Education (Amendment) Act brought into force
by the DMK government was sub-standard, lacked quality and was
politically motivated.
The apex court also ordered that the act be implemented
within 10 days.
Immediately after assuming power, the Jayalalithaa
government had moved an amendment to the act on the ground
that it was sub-standard and the syllabus prescribed was
essentially done to promote the political interest of the then
DMK government.
The Madras High Court's order had struck down the
amendment moved by the Jayalalithaa government.
The Tamil Nadu government had defended its decision to
defer the implementation of the Act on the ground that it
suffered from serious deficiencies.
Senior counsel P P Rao, appearing for the state, had said
that the curriculum introduced by the previous DMK government
"lacked quality, standard and did not conform to the
parameters fixed by the NCERT."
The counsel had said that former VC of Bhartidasan
University Prof Muthukarupan, on whose recommendations the Act
was formulated, had complained that the syllabus lacked
quality and did not fulfill the suggestion and guidelines
prescribed by him.
The state had challenged the high court's order on the
ground that it was "illegal and erroneous."
The high court had also directed the state government to
distribute the textbooks printed under the Uniform System of
Education to enable teachers commence classes and to complete
the exercise by July 22.
Tamil Nadu has over 1.2 crore students in four streams of
school education -- 45,000 state board schools, 11,000
matriculation schools, 25 oriental schools and 50
Anglo--Indian schools, all with separate syllabus, textbooks
and schemes of examinations.
'Samacheer Kalvi' scheme, aimed at bringing about
uniform education, was shelved by Jayalalithaa in one of her
first acts after returning to power.