Thursday, February 27, 2020


Council passes bill to make Marathi must in all schools

MUMBAI | Feb 26, 2020 | HT Correspondent

Marathi is all set to become a compulsory language in schools across all boards in Maharashtra, as the legislative Council unanimously passed a bill on it on Wednesday.
This means Marathi will become mandatory in all Central board schools, including Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), International Baccalaureate (IB) and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) too.
The bill makes it compulsory for all schools in Maharashtra teaching students in Hindi, English and other regional languages to have Marathi in its curriculum for students from Class 1 to 10. Anyone defying this law will have to pay a fine of ₹1 lakh.
Marathi will be introduced in Class 1 and 6 from the coming academic year (2020-21) in a phased manner. Anyone who is currently studying in Class 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 will not be affected.
Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray made the speech in the Council, calling himself fortunate to table such a bill during his tenure. “It was imperative for my generation to preserve this language for the future generation. Marathi has a glorious history, tradition and culture and the time has come to embrace it,” said Thackeray. “My sons went to English-medium schools, but speak excellent Marathi.”
The bill has been drafted along the lines of enactments made by southern states namely Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, which have made regional languages compulsory.
The bill stated that many schools tend to keep Marathi as an optional subject, while some minority schools do not teach Marathi at all. Hence this bill was tabled to correct the anomaly.
It will now be presented before the Assembly and after its passage in the lower house, will be sent to the Governor for his assent. Following this, a notification will be issued to make it a law.
Opposition leader in the legislative council Pravin Darekar said, “We should crack down on schools not following this order and there should be no compromise on adopting the language.”

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/

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