NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Thursday rapped CBSE for being stubborn in its decision to enforce the three-language policy from this year for Class VI students and forced it to reconsider the decision with a clear mandate, camouflaged as a suggestion, to enforce it from next academic year.CBSE had decided to enforce the three-language policy for all classes from Class VI to X, in which the students were to choose three languages of which two must be indigenous. On SC’s request, it reconsidered and agreed to enforce it from Class VI onwards from this year while students in Class VII to X were to be governed by the old policy.SC had asked CBSE to reconsider exempting students of Class VI this year.A bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana is dealing with a bunch of petitions challenging the threelanguage policy, including highlighting the inadequacy of textbooks, indigenous subject teachers and infrastructure.When additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati told the bench that CBSE is disinclined to exempt Class VI this year and argued, “Let the Class VI students start this year as they would have three more years before appearing in Class X board examination,” the bench said, “It is your cohort who decided that it must be enforced from Class VI without considering the comfort of the Class VI students upon whom you sprung a surprise.”“When the notification for enforcing the policy came, the student was already in Class VI. Go back and reconsider. Anyway, the academic year will come to an end in a few months. You enforce it for Class VI students from the 2027-28 academic year,” it said.
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Bhati agreed to take back the decision for reconsideration. The bench said exempting Class VI students from the policy this year would be without prejudice to CBSE’s right to defend the policy. “The exemption is purely from the aspect of logistics and balance of convenience,” it said.SC said, “There are more contentious issues on what can be considered an indigenous language (Petitioners say English should be considered as one while Centre objects to it) which we will decide later.”It added, “There must be some degree of comfort for the students. Those who would be coming to Class VI next year would know in advance that they must choose languages as per the three-language policy.You can also make it optional for Class VI students with adequate incentives so those who want to conform to the policy can choose to do so.” SC posted the matter for further hearing on Wednesday.
