Tamil Nadu Rajya Sabha MPs Accuse Centre Of Imposing Hindi Amid Ongoing Three-Language Policy Row
The Tamil Nadu government and Centre have been at loggerheads over the implementation of the new National Education Policy and the three-language formula proposed under it.
Rajya Sabha MPs from Tamil Nadu on Friday accused the Centre of imposing the Hindi language on the state amid the escalating row between the state government and Centre over the implementation of the three-language formula outlined in the National Education Policy.
The Tamil Nadu government and Centre have been at loggerheads over the implementation of the new National Education Policy and the three-language formula proposed under it.
Participating in the discussion on the working of the Ministry of Home Affairs, MDMK chief Vaiko alleged that the state was being "victimised" by the Home Ministry, which releases disaster relief funds.
"The Minister of Home Affairs who is releasing the disaster relief funds has victimised our state just because we are against your Hindutva policy, RSS policy and imposition of Hindi and Sanskrit," Vaiko said.
Asserting that Tamil is the mother tongue of nearly 120 million people living in more than 114 countries of the world besides India, he said, "I would like to ask the Home Minister when he visited the first time, he said Hindi will be definitely imposed, then an agitation started".
Vaiko further called himself a "product of anti-Hindi agitation".
M Thambidurai of the AIADMK said he supports what Vaiko said regarding the language issue.
"Tamil must be made the official language of this country. This is a long-pending demand of the AIADMK party and (late) Jayalalitha also raised this issue," Thambidurai said.
Tamil is already one of the 22 official languages of the country, apart from Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri.
Gulam Ali (Nominated) sought to counter assertions that minorities were unsafe under the current dispensation, saying the worst riots have taken place under the previous Congress-led governments.
Sanjay Kumar Jha of the JD(U) said the Home Ministry has done a commendable job on various fronts, including repealing the three criminal laws, terrorism and narcotics control.
He further said naxalism has been brought under control in the country, particularly in Bihar.
Sandosh Kumar P of the CPI raised "serious concerns" over the functioning of the Home Ministry.
He alleged that in the name of combating Maoism, a large-scale displacement of forest land is taking place and it is serving the corporates, terming it a "matter of grave concern", especially as it relates to the livelihoods of tribals in Bastar, Chhatisgarh.
He demanded the Home Ministry to "seriously reconsider" its policy, claiming that it was affecting lakhs of tribals in Chhattisgarh, further alleging that several of the encounters in Bastar are "fake encounters" while making it clear that this party CPI ideologically opposes Maoism.
(This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)
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