India, Feb. 9 -- The Supreme Court on Friday pulled up the Uttar Pradesh government for delaying the counselling to students who slapped their Muslim classmate at a school in Muzaffarnagar in August last year following communal remarks by their teacher and ordered the state to conduct the counselling within two weeks.

"We find that the state has not undertaken counselling of other children (besides the victim) who were participants and witnessed the incident. It is too late in the day to initiate measures. There was a measure of urgency required on the part of the state," a bench of justices AS Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan said.

The bench also recalled that it had clearly ordered the state government two months ago to implement the recommendati...