The central government informed the Madras High Court on Monday that the Centre will issue guidelines for conducting online classes by July 15. The Centre notified the Court while the latter was hearing of a batch of petitions seeking a ban on online education.
The case came up for hearing before the bench of judges, Justice MM Sundresh and Justice Hemalatha. The petitioner Saranya of Buddhakaram, in the petition said that since there is a ban on reopening the schools due to the spread of coronavirus, the classes are taking place through online modes. While the students try to attend online classes, they are distracted by obscene websites, the petition said.
Hence, the PIL sought a ban on classes till the government curbs access to children to such websites.
Appearing for the petitioner, lawyer Ravindran said that the Dean of Regional Institute of Ophthalmology and the Government Ophthalmic Hospital at Egmore is also yet to respond to the earlier query of the court.
In another case heard by a different bench on online classes on June 23, advocate Vimal filed a petition saying that since students are attending classes via laptops and mobile phones, the eyesight of the children is getting affected. Therefore the court should ban online classes for students of Class 1 to Class 5. The students of Class 6 and Class 12 should also be allowed to attend classes only for two hours, the PIL said.
For this, the court told the Government Ophthalmic Hospital at Egmore to respond to the query. The bench on Monday once again told the dean to file a report.
Responding to the statement of lawyer Ravindran, additional solicitor general Sankaranarayanan said that the central government will issue guidelines on conducting online classes by July 15. He also requested the court to postpone the case till then.
The High Court hearing both the sides adjourned the case to July 20. The High Court also denied staying conduct of online classes till July 20.