Chennai: “If the government intends to conduct any exhibition to demonstrate their achievement or whatever it may be, the same can be done anywhere else, except in educational institutions”, said Justice N.Kirubakaran of the Madras high court while directing the government not to conduct any programme except education-related programmes in any of the educational institutions, whether it is school, college or university.
Justice Kirubakaran said any educational institution should be allowed to function as it is, without any interference from the government. The academic atmosphere has to be maintained and should not be vitiated. Educational institutions are only for imparting education and no other activity should be undertaken, either temporarily or permanently. Only the programmes with regard to education and incidental programmes could be undertaken in the temple of learning, the judge added.
The judge was disposing of a petition from Kathirvel seeking to restrain the authorities from conducting government exhibition for 45 days from December 2 in the open space earmarked for a playground in the Chikkanna Government Arts college in Tirupur, propagating the achievements and schemes of the government. However, pointing out that the petitioner has approached the court in the last minute and if the petitioner approached this court in time, the result could have been different, the judge permitted the exhibition in the college subject to certain conditions.
The judge said the AG, Vijay Narayan, had submitted that arrangements have been made for conducting exhibition for the past two weeks and the exhibition has to commence from December 2 onwards. Therefore, he submitted that in the last minute, there cannot be any order restraining the authorities from conducting the exhibition. Though the contention of the petitioner was true that the academic atmosphere in educational institution should not be disturbed, a perusal of the records showed that even on November 23 itself, it has been published in the newspapers that arrangements have been made for conducting exhibition and ‘pandal’ (tent) had been put up and it was ready to be inaugurated, the judge added.
The judge imposed 8 conditions for conducting the exhibition. The conditions were: The exhibition should commence at 5 pm. There should not be any usage of loudspeaker before 5 pm. Proper traffic arrangement should be made, so that parking of vehicles can be regulated. Slogans should not be raised by any of them inside the campus. After the exhibition, the playground has to be levelled and it should be restored to its original position. If any of the trees have been cut for the purpose of this exhibition, 25 trees have to be planted by the government for every single tree that was cut down, in an effort to restore the green cover. Since there were two playgrounds available to the institution and one playground was not in usable condition, the authorities were directed to make it usable, within one month from the conclusion of the exhibition.
