Bill passed to declare Kurukh as language for official use

Kolkata: The West Bengal Official Language (Amendment) Bill has been passed in the West Bengal Assembly on Thursday, to declare Kurukh language to be used for official purposes in the state.

It may be mentioned that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had announced a few months ago that steps were being taken to give recognition to the Kurukh language. She had said that she loves and respects all languages.

Kurukh is spoken by the Oraon tribal community. There are around 17 lakh people who speak the language, mainly in places including Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, South Dinajpur and North 24-Parganas. There are a total of around 36.82 lakh Kurukh speaking people in the country.

Now, the Bill has been passed to declare the language "as official language in the districts, sub-division, block or municipality…where the population of Kurukh speaking people exceeds ten percent as a whole or part of the district."

The Kurukh language may be used as an official one besides Bengali, Nepali, Urdu, Hindi, Santhali Oriya and Punjabi.

The language would be used for rules, regulations and by-laws made by the state government, state government's notifications or orders, petitions and applications and replies thereof, in public offices, documents received by public offices and important government advertisements and announcements.

It may be mentioned that the state government has so far taken several steps for the revival of endangered tribal languages.

At the same time, the Mamata Banerjee government has taken up different projects to ensure an overall development of the tribal communities in Bengal.

Now with the West Bengal Official language (Amendment) Bill passed, Kurukh is going to be used for official purposes and the part of the population which speaks the language, will be heavily benefitted by it. Their expectations, for which they had been waiting for a long time, are also going to be fulfilled.