Orders reserved on USE pleas

CHENNAI: The First Bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday reserved its orders on the batch of writ petitions for and against the implementation of the uniform school education (USE) syllabus scheme in the State.The bench, comprising Chief Justice MY Eqbal and Justice TS Sivagnanam, reserved the orders after listening to three days of elaborate arguments from Advocate General A Navaneethakrishnan, Supreme Court senior counsel PP Rao and Additional Advocate-General representing TN in the Supreme Court Guru Krishnakumar and senior advocate NGR Prasad, advocate S Prabakaran and others. The order is likely to be passed by the end of the week, in view of the urgency of the matter involving the educational interest of over 1.35 crore students.Earlier, Guru Krishnakumar submitted that the amendment made to Sec 3 of the Act, which deferred the implementation of USE by a year, was to implement the legislation properly and the State had every power to amend the same. In the orders of the Division bench during the earlier round of arguments on the parent Act, the High Court had not fixed any time limit for the implementation. Hence, the amendment could not be seen as an attempt to delay its implementation.Referring to the contention that the committee sat only on four occasions, counsel said the committee members were experts in the field. Necessary materials were furnished on June 17 and they met again on June 22. They had done adequate home work in the interrugnum, he said.