President Pranab Mukherjee has accepted the recommendation of the Committee of Parliament on Hindi becoming the official language for speeches delivered by all dignitaries, including the President and other ministers, if they can read and speak Hindi.
Living in India but hardly speak Hindi? This was a common scenario amidst many ministers. Now, the President has given a nod to Hindi becoming the official language for speeches.
Notably, this idea was put forth six years back by a committee which made 117 recommendations on how to increase popularity and usage of Hindi.
The President’s notification has been sent to all ministries, states, and the Prime Minister’s Office for compliance.
With this decision, President Mukherjee has also announced that less difficult words shall be used for correspondence letters and emails. This will ensure that ambiguity is reduced.
Along with this, Mukherjee also passed accepted a couple of other recommendations. Mukherjee has passed an order for Air India to stack Hindi magazines for readers on board.
Additionally, all government and semi-government organisations will now have to mention product’s names in Hindi.
The Committee of Parliament on Official Language has given nine reports to the President so far since 1959, the last one in 2011. When the last report was submitted in 2011, former finance minister P Chidambaram was chairing the committee.
The committee also surfaced the idea of extending Hindi as a compulsory subject from class 8 to class 10 in all CBSE and Kendriya Vidyalya schools. President Mukherjee has accepted this proposal “in principle”. Although, this modification will be ushered category A Hindi-speaking states but only after formulation of policy and consultations with states.
However, for non-Hindi speaking states like Chennai among others, the universities after consultation with human resource development (HRD) ministry will attempt to include a Hindi language option in examinations and interviews.
