New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday declined to entertain a PIL for making Yoga a compulsory subject in school curriculum for all students of Classes I-VIII, throughout the country.
A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and L. Nageswara Rao while dismissing the petition filed by Ashwini Upadhyay, of the Delhi unit of BJP, gave him liberty to intervene in a related matter coming up for hearing on November 29, which is against an order of the Delhi High Court rejecting a similar plea.
Earlier senior counsel M.N. Krishnamani informed the Bench that the special leave petition sought implementation of Patanjali Yoga in school curriculum and in its response the National Council for Education, Research and Training (NCERT) had taken a peculiar stand that Patanjalai Sastri, former Chief Justice of India retired in 1954 and he had nothing to do with yoga. The counsel informed that the NCERT board had completely mistook the Patanjali text on yoga to be that of Patanjali Sastri.
CJI initially asked the counsel whether he practiced yoga at home and said “Do you want to do yoga in this environment? Do you know what is the last asana performed?”
