SC refuses urgent hearing on Tamil Nadu's plea against alleged freezing of education scheme funds by Centre over NEP row

New Delhi [India], June 9 (ANI): The Supreme Court on Monday refused to list the Tamil Nadu government's plea against non-disbursal of education scheme funds under the Centre's Samagra Siksha Scheme for an urgent hearing.
A bench of Justices PK Mishra and Manmohan stated that there was no urgency on the matter.
Tamil Nadu recently approached the apex court seeking directions for the release of the education funds. In its plea, the state alleged that the Union government had frozen the disbursal of the said funds due to the state governments' refusal to implement the National Education Policy (NEP).
In its plea, the Tamil Nadu government has sought the Court to declare that the National Education Policy, 2020, and the PM SHRI Schools Scheme are not binding on the state unless a formal agreement is entered into with the Union Government.
The Tamil Nadu government further argued that its entitlement to funds under the Samagra Shiksha Scheme has been unlawfully made conditional on the implementation of these central schemes, which it considers to be unconstitutional, arbitrary, and illegal.
"The glaring reason for such non-disbursement is that the Defendant has linked the release of Samagra Shiksha Scheme funds with the implementation of 'National Education Policy' and 'NEP exemplary PM SHRI Schools' Scheme, despite the fact that these policies/schemes are separate schemes. That the reason of such apparent linkage is the fact that the MoU pertaining to the PM SHRI Schools Scheme dictates for implementation of the NEP-2020 in the Plaintiff State (Tamil Nadu) in its entirety which is not agreeable to the Plaintiff State due to the vociferous opposition to the Clause 4.13 of the NEP-2020 which envisages three-language formula", the plea read. (ANI)