Bengaluru: The Karnataka high court has dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking “quashing” of a newspaper statement attributed to education minister Madhu Bangarappa on doing away with marks for third language Hindi in the SSLC examination.A division bench, comprising Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice CM Poonacha, initially imposed Rs 50,000 as cost on S Venkatesh and his wife HN Chandana, residents of Nelamangala taluk, Bengaluru Rural district, and then increased it to Rs 1 lakh.The petitioners claimed the minister’s statement was “extremely derogatory” and urged the court to exercise its “extraordinary jurisdiction” to “quash” the news item which appeared in a Kannada newspaper.“We find this is really not a litigation in the interest of the public, but more an interest in seeking publicity. We accordingly dismiss the present petition with a cost of 50,000 payable to the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority,” the bench initially said.However, the petitioners’ counsel then submitted that the statement indicated that Hindi should be done away with.“This statement is completely erroneous, and no such statement appeared in the newspaper. This establishes that the present petition is a motivated one, maybe to seek publicity,” the bench added while doubling the cost amount.The petitioner couple claimed that the March 29 press statement of the minister indicated that Hindi would no longer be compulsory, with no marks awarded, and that the state would implement a two-language formula.According to them, such a decision seriously affected the children who just wrote the SSLC examination.
