Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 18: The Tamil Nadu government, which has raised questions over the Supreme Court directing the state to follow a central policy on education which is in the concurrent list of the constitution, has asserted on Friday that it would remain firm on its two-language policy and would not provide land to the centre for setting up of the Navodaya Vidyalayas under the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Syllabus.
The Tamil Nadu Minister for School Education Rajmohan was responding to a question at a press conference at the secretariat in Chennai about its stand on the Supreme Court oral observations on Thursday giving the state three months’ time to comply with its December 15, 2025, direction to identify the requisite land in each district to establish Navodaya schools in the state.
The apex court had said Tamil Nadu had to change the “mindset” that Hindi cannot be taught on the soil of the State, cautioning that “individual States cannot act like individual countries.” The oral observations from Justice B.V. Nagarathna had come in a nearly hour-long hearing on the adoption of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Scheme in the State.
“As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, we follow the two-language policy, and we will continue to do so. There will be no change in our stand,” said Mr Rajmohan. “Justice B.V. Nagarathna has expressed her opinion. This is not the verdict. The judicial proceedings are under way. We are not against Hindi or any other language. We have been successfully running model schools and many students from those schools have excelled in higher education,” he added.
The dispute arise from the state’s two language policy of Tamil and English that clash with three-language formula followed by the Navodaya schools that include a third Indian language, mostly Hindi. The Tamil Nadu government maintain that by setting up the Navodaya schools, the Centre was trying to impose Hindi in Tamil Nadu through the backdoor.
The Centre, however, claim that in the non-Hindi speaking states, the medium of instruction in the Navodaya Vidyalayas were primarily the regional language or English and establishing the schools would not mean replacing Tamil Nadu’s existing schools and its education system.
The petitioner in the case the Kumari Maha Sabha has argued that the students in Tamil Nadu should not be denied access to the Navodaya schools. It has told the Supreme Court earlier that the Navodaya schools if set up in Tamil Nadu would provide another avenue to the students in the state to access free education.
The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas are centrally-run residential schools under the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, aimed at providing education to students, particularly from the rural areas, and operate separately from a state’s education network.