CHENNAI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the verdict of the Madras High Court on the implementation of Uniform School Education system and directed that it be enforced within 10 days. A couple of hours after the apex court ruling, Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa promised the State Assembly that Samacheer Kalvi would be brought into effect soon in accordance with the ruling.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 about by the DMK government was sub-standard, lacked quality and was politically motivated. 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 Madras High Court had on July 18 struck down an amendment moved by the AIADMK government to defer implementation of USE. In the Assembly on Tuesday, the Chief Minister intervened during the speech of P Dillibabu of the CPM, who was pleading for implementation of USE, and said, “The Apex Court has given its verdict just this morning, upholding the verdict of the Madras High Court. The court has directed that the verdict should be enforced within 10 days. As such, the government will implement the USE immediately.”The CPI and CPM have welcomed the SC verdict. CPI State secretary D Pandian said since the Chief Minister had made the announcement, the debate over the issue was closed now. Pointing out that USE was not just about enforcing a common syllabus for all students, CPM State secretary G Ramakrishnan said the government must improve infrastructure in schools, reduce the student-teacher ratio, set up a common board integrating all existing streams of education and bring into effect other recommendations made by the Muthukumaran Committee that was set up to look into the issue.
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