New Delhi: The Maharashtra Government’s proposal for granting the “classical language” status to Marathi is again under active consideration, in consultation with other ministries and Committee of Linguistic Experts through Sahitya Akademi.
Disclosing this in a written reply to Narayan Rane (BJP), Minister of State for Culture & Tourism Prahlad Singh Patel said the proposal was earlier put on back-burner because of several writ petitions pending in the Madras High Court that have been now disposed off.
He said the government has recently nominated two members – Prof Arun Diwaker Nath Bajpai, former VC of Himachal and Rewa Universities, and Prof Arunoday Saha, former vice-chancellor of Central University, Tripura – in the Linguistic Experts Committee against two vacancies of Dr VC Kulandal Swamy’s resignation and Prof Bh Krishnamurti’s death.
The minister said, “Now, the committee will meet soon to review the criteria to classify a language as “Classical Language” and also to find out how many other languages are likely to become eligible to be classified as ‘Classical Language’ under the reviewed guidelines. Inter-Ministerial consultations will follow.”
