On Thursday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah stated that Hindi should be acknowledged as an alternate language to English but not to local languages.

He told the 37th Parliamentary Official Language Committee meeting that “until we make Hindi flexible by taking vocabulary from different local languages, it would not be disseminated.”

The Home Minister informed members that 70% of the Cabinet’s agenda is now prepared in Hindi, and over 22,000 Hindi teachers have been hired in the eight northeastern states.

“The northeast’s nine tribal nations have changed their dialect scripts to Devanagari, and all eight northeast states have decided to make Hindi obligatory in schools up to Class 10,” he said.

Shah further stated that kids up to Class 9 should be taught basic Hindi and that emphasis should be placed on Hindi teaching assessments.

The Home Minister further stated that an Implementation Committee should be formed following a meeting with all concerned Secretaries to examine the status of implementing recommendations from the first to eleventh volumes of the Official Language Committee report.

He further stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has determined that Hindi will be the official language for administering the government, which will undoubtedly raise the importance of Hindi.

On this occasion, the Home Minister unanimously endorsed the submission of the 11th Volume of the Committee’s report to the President, stating that the current Official Language Committee is working at an unprecedented pace.

He stated that sending three reports to the President throughout the committee’s mandate is a team effort.

Union Ministers of State for Home Ajay Kumar Mishra and Nishith Pramanik, as well as Vice-Chairman of the Official Language Parliamentary Committee Bhartruhari Mahtab and other members of the Committee, were present at the meeting.