New Delhi, July 14 (IANS) The Supreme Court Tuesday refused to suspend a Karnataka High Court order which junked the state government’s language policy binding all primary schools in the state to teach only in Kannada or students’ mother tongues and not in English.
A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice B.S. Chauhan refused to suspend the July 2008 order of the high court. “The language should be of universal advantage and not a barrier of communication,” it said.

Refusing to accede to the state’s plea to suspend the high court’s order, the apex court bench said: “The parents should be given a choice in deciding the medium of instruction for their children. The schools and parents must have an option.”

It slated tentatively in the last week of August the final hearing on the Karnataka government’s lawsuit challenging the high court’s order that scrapped the state government’s language policy and granted freedom to the unaided minority schools in the state to choose their own medium of instructions for all classes, including the primary ones.

The high court had later even launched the contempt-of-court proceeding against several state government officials for allegedly not permitting the unaided minority schools in the state to teach students of classes I-IV in English.

The state government, in violation of the high court’s July 2008 order, was asking the schools to follow the state’s language policy of 1989, which stipulated that students in primary classes should be imparted education only in Kannada or their mother tongues.

Following a brief hearing of the state’s lawsuit, the apex court halted permanently the contempt proceedings.

Karnataka government counsel Sanjay Hegde pointed out to the bench that the state has already moved the apex court against the high court ruling.