Amarinder Singh has urged review of the list since these languages “will also be taught in schools”.
Chandigarh:
Four months after a bill on official languages of Jammu and Kashmir, not mentioning Punjabi, was passed in the Parliament, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention.
Amarinder Singh has written to PM Modi seeking the language’s inclusion in the list citing the Punjabi community’s “historical links” in the region “since the time of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s era”.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Singh urged him to advise the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to reconsider and review the official list since these languages “will also be taught in schools as compulsory subjects”.
In September, both houses of the Parliament passed The Jammu and Kashmir Languages Bill which included Kashmiri, Dongri and Hindi to the official list in addition to Urdu and English.
The move was slammed by the Punjabi community as the Congress, AAP and Shiromani Akali Dal criticised the BJP for the “anti-minority” move.
“When Jammu and Kashmir came into existence as an independent state, Punjabi was a widely spoken language in the state. Punjabi is now the mother tongue of all Punjabis in the Jammu region and it is also spoken by Punjabi community living in Kashmir Valley,” reads the letter dated January 27.
The letter further urges the Prime Minister to include Punjabi language in the list of J&K’s official languages stating it has caused “avoidable resentment”.
Punjab Chief Minister’s request to make the Punjabis feel included in J&K comes at a time when their image is under attack by certain sections of the media trying to project that the farmers’ movement is being driven by people of only one state. They have also called the protestors “Khalistanis” – members of a Sikh separatist movement.
The community’s image further took a beating after the farmers’ Republic Day tractor rally descended into chaos with the Red Fort as its epicentre.