LAHORE: The Lahore High Court chief justice on Friday disposed of a petition of the Pakistan Punjabi Adabi Board against banning the use of the Punjabi language by a private school on its Sahiwal campus.

The headmaster of the school campus appeared before the court and tendered an unconditional apology in writing for his action.

The chief justice accepted the apology and disposed of the petition.

The board through its Secretary Parveen Malik had pleaded that the Beaconhouse School System’s Sahiwal campus headmaster issued a circular against “use of foul language by students during school timings”. According to the circular, “the foul languages include taunts, abuses, Punjabi and hate speech”.

The petitioner said the school administration by declaring Punjabi a foul language committed violation of the Constitution that requires the government to preserve regional languages besides the national language Urdu. She contended that no language of the world could be declared foul.

The petitioner asked the court to set aside the circular of the school and direct the government to take action against the authorities responsible for demeaning the Punjabi language.

Published in Dawn January 28th, 2017