Singing Vande Mataram in Tamil Nadu schools, offices made compulsory by High Court

A single-judge bench of Justice M V Muralidharan said the national anthem must be sung at least once a week in schools either on Monday or Friday and once a month in offices.

The judge said, "If people feel it is difficult to sing the song in Bengali or in Sanskrit, steps can be taken to translate the song in Tamil."

He said the court hopes and trusts that  this order shall be taken in the right spirit and also implemented in letter and spirit.

The issue came up in the court after a person, K Veeramani filed a petition stating that he had failed to clear the written test for the post of BT Assistant as he answered that the song was written in Bengali.

According to the petitioner, he was awarded 89 marks as against the minimum eligibility mark of 90 for the post and he lost the opportunity.

The petitioner said he found that he had lost the one mark for answering a question on the language of 'Vande Mataram'. He claimed that he had read in many books where it was stated that the song was originally written in Bengali, alleging that the Teachers Recruitment Board was wrong in negating his right answer.

The judge directed the Advocate General to find out the right answer and the AG on  July 13 clarified that the original language of 'Vande Mataram' was Sanskrit but written in Bengali script.

The judge said the government must include Veeramani in the teacher selection process.