Madurai Bench of the Madras High court today ordered issue of notice to the Tamil Nadu government on a PIL seeking to declare all the 22 languages found in Schedule VIII of the constitution as National and official languages of the Union of India.
A Division Bench of Justice Jayachandran and Justice Mahadevan ordered issue of notice to the Cabinet Secretary and the Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary seeking their reply within four weeks.
Advocate S Rajamanickam, the petitioner, said even after 67 years of independence the Union Government was adopting two tier language formula for all official communications - Interstate, National and International.
Originally, in 1947, the Hindi belt consisted of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.
The other states were non Hindi speaking states having their official languages as their regional ones.
Already Tamil Nadu and West Bengal were agitating before the Union Government for making Bengali and Tamil to be the official languages of their respective High Courts.
Hence as enshrined in the articles relating to language, giving regard to the industrial, cultural and scientific advancement of the nation and also just claims and aspirations of various citizens in non-Hindi speaking states all the Schedule VIII languages should be made national and official languages, the petitioner said.
