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The Commissioner Linguistic Minority has recommended abolition of the Eighth Schedule and treating all languages on equal footing. Taking note of distinction being made between the languages in the Eighth Schedule and those outside, the Commissioner in his 41st Report, has said that the Schedule creates an erroneous impression that the Constitution provides certain exclusive rights to the languages included in it. "Actually there are no such privileges. There is no bar on non-scheduled language being the Official Language of the State", say the Report.
The Commissioner has also recommended that the Finance Commission should evolve a package of assistance to the States to enable them to develop minor and tribal languages which should then be used for imparting instructions at the primary level of education.
The Commissioner has strongly urged that a proper machinery at the State level and the district level be set up to listen to the grievances of the linguistic minorities. The States should take adequate steps to receive the applications in the minority language and endeavour to reply to the same in the same language.
The Commissioner, in his investigations, found that whereas some states are taking appropriate action for the minority languages, some other states are not giving due attention to this. These include Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab where the record is not so good.
The Report was laid by the Government on the Table of the both Houses of Parliament recently during the on-going Budget Session.
MLD:LK:sje-8(6.5)
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