The BJP has strongly criticised Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for claiming credit for Bangla getting the "classical language" status.

A day after the central Government decided to confer the classical language status on Bengali along with other languages like Assamese, Marathi, Pali etc, Banerjee claimed that it was she who had "first made the move to extract the high status for the Bangla language."

Banerjee who was out inaugurating Durga Puja pandals all across Kolkata said this while addressing meetings, "We are extremely happy that Bangla has won the Classical Language status … it was me who had first made the move to snatch this status for our language … we had given the Centre such well-researched and concrete papers that they had to grant this status to Bangla," Banerjee on Friday said adding "the people of Bengal will be extremely happy to learn this achievement of ours."

Earlier Prime Minister Narendera Modi wrote on the X that "I am very happy that the great Bengali language has been conferred the status of a Classical Language, especially during the auspicious Durga Puja. Bengali literature has inspired countless people for years. I congratulate all the Bengali speakers all over the world on this."

Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar soon reacted to Banerjee's statement saying it was not the Chief Minister but "two martyrs of Bengali language of recent times who should get the credit for dying for the language."

Thanking the Prime Minister for the step taken by his Government Majumdar reminded how two school children Tapas Sarkar and Rajesh Burman of Dandibhit village of North Dinajpur district were shot dead by the Bengal Police while they were agitating against imposition of Urdu in place of Bengali "to satisfy the Chief Minister's vote bank politics" highlighted by minority appeasement.

"If these students were alive today they would have been extremely happy and proud," he said complaining, how Urdu words were being allowed to silently creep into Bengali language that was being followed in the school text books.

Bengal Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari too thanked the Prime Minister saying that the "people of Bengal are extremely happy to see their beloved language getting included in the list of classical languages "under the leadership of the hounorable Prime Minister."

When asked to comment on the Chief Minister claiming the credit for the feat he said, "one must ignore the lies peddled by her … by now the people of Bengal have learnt to accept her statements with a pinch of salt."

The initiative of providing Indian languages the Classical Language status in 2004 when a Linguistic Experts Committee was constituted by the Ministry of Culture under the Sahitya Academi to examine the eligibility of the Indian languages to get such status.