The Bombay High Court recently criticised the Maharashtra government for its contradictory actions against the demands made for promoting the Marathi language across Maharashtra. The court observed that the Government Resolutions (GRs) issued by the Maharashtra government could lead to shutting down hundreds of Marathi-medium schools across the state.
The observations came during a hearing before a division bench of Justices Madhav Jamdar and Pravin Patil at the Kolhapur bench of the Bombay High Court. The bench was reviewing petitions filed against two Government Resolutions (GRs) issued by the Maharashtra government on April 1 and April 2, 2025. These resolutions permanently disqualified several unaided primary and secondary schools from receiving grant-in-aid from the government.
More than 433 primary schools and 324 secondary schools across Maharashtra would be affected by the resolutions, most of them being Marathi medium schools situated in rural and semi-rural regions. The judges further raised concerns that students from economically weaker sections of society could not be deprived of the primary and secondary education received from regional schools.
The controversy began after the government directed affected schools to apply under the Maharashtra Self-Financed Schools Act, 2012, before April 30, 2025. According to the resolutions, schools that failed to apply within the deadline would automatically stand cancelled. Many institutions argued that converting into self-financed schools was not practically possible, especially for institutions operating in financially weak rural areas where students come from low-income backgrounds and cannot afford higher fees.
During the hearing, the bench pointed out that the State had not properly considered all factors before taking ‘drastic’ decisions. It asked whether teaching and non-teaching staff working in these schools could be absorbed elsewhere if the institutions shut down, or whether students living in remote villages, which may not have nearby education institutions, could be accommodated in nearby schools.
The court claimed that the government should have conducted a more detailed evaluation and granted an individual hearing for each school before taking action.
Several affected schools, including two Urdu-medium institutions, filed petitions against the GRs issued by the government. Under the GRs, the recognition of the schools would be automatically cancelled if they did not apply under the Self-Financed Act before April 30. The Bombay HC thus provided relief to the schools, ruling that the GRs could not be applied to the petitioner schools. It directed the government to remove their names from the list attached to the GRs, and allowed them to continue functioning without any coercive action.
The Bombay High Court’s observations reflect a broader concern about whether language preservation can truly succeed if institutions teaching that language are pushed toward closure. As the case continues, the court’s remarks have drawn attention to the growing gap between Maharashtra’s stated commitment to Marathi and the practical challenges faced by Marathi-medium schools across the state.
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