The Madras High Court today reserved its orders on various petitions challenging the classical status given to languages other than Tamil.
The direction was given by the first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan hearing submissions by the counsel who appeared on behalf of Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu languages which were awarded classical status by the Centre.
The bench directed the official, who accompanied the central government counsel, to file a single-page affidavit as to how Tamil was granted classical language status and how the criteria in offering languages classical status was evolved.
The Centre submitted that classical status was accorded purely on the recommendations by the Linguistic Expert Committee and not going by any other things.
The languages which satisfied the criteria fixed by the Committee were awarded classical status, the counsel for the Centre submitted.
The counsel, who appeared on behalf of other languages, submitted that when the criteria fixed to determine the classical status cannot be challenged, the decision taken on the basis of the criteria cannot be challenged.
The counsel for the Centre further submitted that the other languages had also furnished details required such as their manuscripts, Temple descriptions and the linguistic analysis and other materials to the satisfaction of the criteria. Hence, the union government accorded the classical status to other languages.
The court reserved its orders on the matter.
