Times of India: Madurai: Thursday, May 03, 2018.
Information
obtained under the RTI (Right to Information) Act and subsequent legal battles
before the Madras high court Madurai bench has helped a law graduate help
obtain the ‘Person Studied in Tamil Medium’ (PSTM) certificate. The certificate
has paved way for him to write examination for the direct recruitment to the
post of civil judge in the Tamil Nadu judicial service, to get preference in
the recruitment drive. Twenty per cent of vacancies has been reserved for PSTM
in the recruitment.
The
petitioner A Aathiyan had joined five-year BABL (integrated course) at the
Government Law College (Madurai) in 2012-13 in Tamil medium and completed his
course in 2016-17. He wrote all the examinations in Tamil. When he had demanded
the college to provide him the PSTM certificate, the college denied it saying
that at the time of his joining there was no Tamil Medium in the college.
He then filed
a case before the court seeking a direction to the director of legal studies,
the Tamil Nadu Dr Ambedkar Law University registrar and Government Law College
(Madurai) principal to provide him the certificate.
Justice M S
Ramesh heard the case. Petitioner’s counsel A K Hemaraj submitted that the
petitioner obtained information under the RTI Act from the director of legal
studies, according to which the government introduced Tamil Medium in
Government Law College, Madurai in 1978-79 by way of a government order and
thereafter no GO was passed to discontinue the Tamil medium.
Filing the
counter affidavit of the college principal, additional government pleader J
Gunaseelan Muthiah said that in view of the lack of interest among students the
Tamil medium was discontinued from 1994-95 and later it was re-commenced from
2013-14. As the petitioner joined the course in 2012-13, he was not entitled
for the PSTM certificate. The university also reiterated the same submissions.
After giving
careful consideration to the submissions, the judge said, “When the facility of
introducing Tamil medium of instruction was done through a government order,
the respondents (government and university) may not be justified in making a
statement that the Tamil medium of instruction was discontinued without
obtaining a separate government order. In the absence of any government order,
what follows is that the Tamil medium of instruction is deemed to have
continued from the academic year 1978-79 onwards without any discontinuance.
Hence, the principal is directed to issue PSTM certificate to the petitioner.”
Adhering to
the court order, the principal of the Government Law College (Madurai) on
Tuesday issued Aathiyan the PSTM certificate.
Interestingly,
when the single judge had on April 24 ordered for issuance of PSTM certificate,
the government preferred an appeal immediately against the single judge order.
But, the division bench expressed its dissatisfaction and directed to issue the
certificate to him by keeping the appeal pending.
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