Madras High Court upholds T.N. government’s insistence on public service aspirants being proficient in Tamil

Madras High Court upholds Tamil Nadu government's requirement for Tamil language proficiency in public service recruitment.

The Madras High Court has refused to accept a contention that the Tamil Nadu government’s insistence on scoring 40 out of 150 marks in Tamil language proficiency paper as a pre-condition to evaluate general studies paper, and the decision to consider the cumulative marks scored in both papers for appointment in public service, would amount to giving 100% reservation to Tamil medium candidates.

Justice G.R. Swaminathan dismissed writ petitions filed by 10 English medium aspirants to Group IV service in Tamil Nadu Combined Civil Services. The petitioners had challenged a Government Order (GO) issued on December 1, 2021 and also a consequential notification issued by the Tamil Nadu Public Services Commission (TNPSC) on January 30, 2024 for filling up 6,244 vacancies.

The judge agreed with Advocate General P.S. Raman that the GO as well as the TNPSC notification were fully in consonance with Section 21-A of the Tamil Nadu Government Servants (Conditions of Service) Act of 2016 and therefore they could not be found fault with. He also took note that Section 21-A was introduced in 2021 and many recruitments had taken place since then.

“Section 21-A of the Act has not been challenged. A subordinate legislation can be assailed only if it can be shown that it is contrary to Constitution or it is ultra vires the parent Act. The petitioners have not been able to demonstrate that the impugned (under challenge) GO is ultra vires the Constitution. The scope of controversy has therefore become limited,” the judge wrote.

He went on to state: “As rightly pointed out by the learned Advocate General, government servants holding Group IV posts will have to have direct interaction with the people... They should be able to fluently converse and write in Tamil. This is a sine qua non for efficient discharge of their functions and duties. This can be found out only by making them write the eligibility paper in Tamil.”

Appearing on behalf of the writ petitioners, senior counsel S. Nalini Chidambaram had argued that the marks scored in general studies paper alone be taken into consideration for recruitment because otherwise candidates proficient in the local language would score full 150 marks in the Tamil paper and get recruited comfortably even if they hardly score anything in general studies.

However, the judge refused to accept her argument that the marks scored in the Tamil paper should be taken into consideration only for the limited purpose of finding out whether the candidates could score a minimum of 40% when it comes to local language proficiency and that those marks in the language paper should otherwise be completely ignored while drawing the merit list.