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The Telangana High Court on Thursday, August 7, asked the state government to clarify the status of implementing mandatory Telugu learning in schools under the Telangana (Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Telugu in Schools) Act, 2018. The court was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Pramila Pathak, a Hindi teacher from Ramchandrapuram mandal in Medak district, who contended that the Act disadvantages non-Telugu speaking students.
Enacted by the former Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government, the law gave all primary and high schools in Telangana five years to fully enforce the ‘Telugu must’ requirement.
Pramila Pathak’s counsel cited a state government memo from December 2024 mandating Telugu as a compulsory subject for Class 9 from the 2024–25 academic year, and for Class 10 from 2026–27. The memo stated that the Vennela textbook would be used to simplify learning and make the subject engaging, even for students from non-Telugu backgrounds.
The directive sparked protests in April 2025 at Hyderabad’s Dharna Chowk, with students and parents arguing that compulsory Telugu curtails academic freedom and disadvantages non-Telugu speakers, especially those starting the language only from Class 9 and competing with peers who have studied it since Class 1.
The Telangana government’s order came amid a separate national debate over the Union government’s three-language policy under the New Education Policy (NEP). At the time, Tamil Nadu was strongly opposing the inclusion of Hindi as a third language, calling it “Hindi imposition.”