NEW DELHI: Senior advocate P P Rao on Wednesday stated in the Supreme Court that the controversial amendment to Tamil Nadu’s School Education Act for scrapping the curriculum approved by the previous DMK regime was ill-advised and uncalled for.“Yes, I agree, sound, bold and independent legal opinion was not given that the said amendment was not necessary. It is true, by doing an unnecessary thing we have landed ourselves in unnecessary trouble,” Rao, representing the TN government, told a Bench comprising justices J M Panchal, Deepak Verma and B S Chauhan.Rao was replying to the Bench’s posers on the need for the amendment when the Madras High Court had already given it one year’s time to implement the Act brought in by the previous government.Rao said that the amendment Act only envisaged postponement of the implementation of USE till the next year. More so, since an earlier Division Bench of the High Court had directed the government to ensure other compliances before the system could be implemented.However, the counsel at the conclusion of the day-long hearing, told the apex court that the views expressed by him were personal and the press was distorting his observations as being that of the State government.Advocate General of the Tamil Nadu government Guru Krishna Kumar told the Bench that the legislature had the competence to enact such an amendment Act and the legislation was not colourable. After having held that the legislature had the competence, the High Court ought not to have gone into the motive and intent of the legislature, he emphasised.Since it is settled in law that malafides cannot be attributed to the legislature, a superior court would be cautious in exercising judicial review of an expert opinion, which is left to the realm of experts, Kumar added.Senior counsel A Sundaram, appearing for some of the schools, submitted that the power to legislate or carry out an amendment was the prerogative of the legislature and the courts cannot and should not interfere in the matters unless it violated the Constitution. The arguments would continue on Thursday. On June 14, the apex court had ordered the constitution of an expert committee to go into the controversy and submit a report. The panel found that the uniform school education (USE) system could not be implemented in its present form since the syllabus was deficient in quality and suggested alternatives to modify them. Unless the recommendations were implemented, USE could not be implemented for the present academic year, it added.
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