SC extends deadline for text books distribution

Updated on: Friday, July 29, 2011

The Supreme Court extended till August 5 the dealine for Jayalalithaa government in Tamil Nadu to distribute the 9 crore text books to students under the Uniform System of School Education (Amendment) Act, 2011.

A three-judge bench of justices J M Panchal, Deepak Verma and B S Chauhan passed the direction while dealing with Tamil Nadu government's decision to scrap the curriculum approved by the previous DMK regime under the impugned Act.

During the day-long arguments, senior counsel T R Andhiarujina, appearing for some of the associations which are in favour of curriculum, told the bench that the AIADMK government acted in undue haste due to political reasons.

"The amended Act was passed with undue haste on a single day and the Governor's assent was obtained on the same day and it was clear that everything was done with lightning speed," he said.

The Jayalalithaa government had moved the apex court challenging the Madras High Court's order which had struck down an amendment to the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education (Amendment) Act, 2011.

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 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 AngloIndian 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 since returning to power of reversing several pet schemes of the previous DMK government

SC extends deadline for text books distribution

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