Can’t ask govt. to recognise a language as official one: SC

CategoryPolity

Last Updated24/07/2023

Recently, The Supreme Court held that it cannot direct the Centre to include Rajasthani as an official language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
The court referred to a 1997 judgement (Kanhaiya Lal Sethia case) and stated “to include or not to include a particular language in the VIIIth Schedule is a policy matter of the Union”

The Eight Schedule lists the official languages of India
It consists of the following 22 languages
- (1) Assamese, (2) Bengali, (3) Gujarati, (4) Hindi, (5) Kannada, (6) Kashmiri, (7) Konkani, (8) Malayalam, (9) Manipuri, (10) Marathi, (11) Nepali, (12) Odia, (13) Punjabi, (14) Sanskrit, (15) Sindhi, (16) Tamil, (17) Telugu, (18) Urdu (19) Bodo, (20) Santhali, (21) Maithili and (22) Dogri.
Of these languages, 14 were initially included in the Constitution.

Part XVII of the Indian constitution deals with the official languages in Articles 343 to 351.
The Constitutional provisions related to the Eighth Schedule
- Article 344: Article 344(1) provides for the constitution of a Commission by the President on expiration of five years from the commencement of the Constitution.
- Article 351: It provides for the spread of the Hindi language to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India.
However, there is no fixed criteria for any language to be considered for inclusion in the Eighth Schedule.