On January 3, the Supreme Court's division bench of Justice S.K. Kaul and Justice A.S. Oka granted the State of Tamil Nadu the final opportunity to file a response in a plea challenging the order of the Madras High Court, which refused to quash the Government Order of 2014, which made Tamil paper compulsory in Class 10 State Board exam for all students. The Bench noted in its orders that it had previously granted the State Government time to file its counter-affidavit. Following that, it gave the State of Tamil Nadu three weeks to file its counter-affidavit and scheduled the matter for the 30th of January, 2023.

For the academic year 2020-2022, the Madras High Court exempted students from linguistic minority schools from writing Tamil language papers in the Class 10 State Board Examination. It appears that the petitioner organization's case was heard by the Supreme Court after the exemption expired.

The petition contends that, despite the petitioner organization's agreement to teach Tamil to its students, the State Government has gone so far as to remove all minority languages from the list of compulsory languages. It emphasises that the languages that have been removed are the mother tongues of linguistic minorities, and that denying them the opportunity to learn them violates their fundamental right as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution.

Case Title: Linguistic Minorities Forum of Tamil Nadu v. State of Tamil Nadu And Ors. 
Citation: SLP(C) No. 16727-16728/2022