The Madras High Court on Wednesday served a notice to the Odisha Government on a PIl challenging classical language status to Odia, according to reports. Adjudicating the petition filed by R Gandhi, a lawyer, a Bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice MM Sundresh has served this notice while asking the concerned registry to tag the PIl with the similar petitions challenging grant of classical status to Telugu and Kannada languages.
The Union Ministry of Culture vide a notification on March 11, 2014 had granted the status to Odia language after a proposal in this regard was cleared by the linguistics Expert Committee appointed by the Ministry in July 2013.
The approval was delayed as some petitioners had filed complaints with the Union Home Ministry against the approval of classical tag to Odia at the Madras High Court. The language was accorded classical tag despite the matter was being sub-judice.
The petitioner contended that Ministry of Culture and Home affairs should adhere to criteria laid down to determine the eligibility of a language to be considered for categorisation as a “Classical language” as per the notification of the Centre on November 25, 2005.
As per the criteria, the status should be given to the language with “high antiquity of its early texts/recorded history over a period of 1500-2000 years”, the petitioner contended.
The claim of any language for classical language has to be evaluated in terms of the criteria which are really based on recommendations of the Gopi Chand Narang Committee appointed by Government of India, he argued.