The government will introduce a draft law in the budget session for making Kannada the mandatory medium of instruction for classes 1-5 in all schools.
It will also introduce another legislation to make Kannada a mandatory subject from class 1 to 12.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Minister for State for Primary and Secondary Education Kimmane Ratnakar said that the decision to introduce the legislations was taken after a Cabinet sub-committee meeting under the chairmanship of Law Minister T B Jayachandra on Thursday to discuss the matter.
The decision to bring an amendment to the Right to Education Act was made, to seek relief from the Supreme Court orders against making Kannada a mandatory medium of instruction for primary school, said Ratnakar.
The minister said that education was listed under the Concurrent List of the Constitution, and thus Karnataka could take an independent decision in this regard. He said that the decision to make Kannada the compulsory medium of instruction was taken after consulting legal experts.
“We intend to use this platform for drawing the attention of the Supreme Court towards the thinking of the State on the issue of language,” he said.
Ratnakar said that the government was bound by the petition filed against it in the High court, pertaining to the medium of instruction.
The minister said that a petition had been filed against the government in the High Court, for not following the directives of the Supreme Court. He said that with this legislation, they could submit their stance to the High Court by March 31.
“We are also contemplating on submitting this amendment legislation to the SC, where our curative petition challenging the SC constitutional bench verdict on medium of instruction is pending,” he said.
The minister said that he had also written letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani and union ministers from the State on bringing an amendment to the Constitution in this regard.
“The Centre must amend the Constitution for protecting the regional languages in future,” he said.
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