The Madras High Court bench here has directed the Tamil Nadu government to permit students of five private CBSE/ICSE schools offering higher secondary courses under the state board to appear for the public examinations this year.
Justices R Sudhakar and V M Velumani passed the interim order during the hearing of a plea of the education department to admit their review petition against the March 7, 2012 order of another division bench directing the department to grant permission to the schools to conduct higher secondary classes under the state board syllabus.
The review petition would be taken up for final hearing on February 18.
The Judges gave the interim direction yesterday following submissions made by the schools' counsel that there was a threat of the students being kept out of the process of issuing hall tickets unless the court passed interim orders.
The Government Pleader said the School Education Department had passed an order in July 2001 itself stating that it would not grant permission for starting class XI and XII alone under the State Board syllabus.
However, "by mistake" one school here was granted permission and a few others approached the high court and obtained favourable orders from a single judge in 2011 for conducting higher secondary classes under the State Board.
Now the permission granted to the Madurai school had been withdrawn.
Appeals filed by the state against the single judge's orders were dismissed in 2012 and the Supreme Court too dismissed a Special Leave Petition in 2013.
But as it left the question of law open, the state preferred the present review petitions.
