The Hindu : Karnataka News : `Withdraw order on translation of GOs'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 02, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

`Withdraw order on translation of GOs'

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, MAY 1. Kannada Geleyara Balaga, a newly formed forum supported by several pro-Kannada organisations, has urged the Government to withdraw its March 31 order directing all government departments to make arrangements for "translation of important orders, rules and notifications into the minority languages concerned, in addition to Kannada and English and give wide publicity to such orders in areas where the population of linguistic minorities constitutes 15 per cent and above of the local population as per the 1991 Census."

(The minority languages are Konkani, Tulu, Kodava, Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi.)

The former chairman of the Kannada Development Authority, G. Narayana; the noted Gandhian H.S. Doreswamy; the former president of the Kannada Sahitya Parishath, Go. Ru. Channabasappa; the Kannada Shakti Kendra president, M. Chidananda Murthy; the former chairman of the Kannada Book Authority, L.S. Sheshagiri Rao; and the Kannada activists Ra. Nam. Chandrasekhar and M. Narasimha told presspersons here today that the order would prove detrimental to the language policy of the State and would affect the administration at several levels.

In an oblique reference to the 1982 Gokak agitation demanding primacy for Kannada, they claimed that opposition to the order had already been expressed in several parts of the State.

They said the order was first issued on November 11, 1966 and updated four times on November 24, 1982; November 16, 1990; May 20, 1999; and July 30, 2001 with minor modifications. Keeping the basic content of the order intact, the Government, on March 31, 2004, instructed that "all the departments in the Government should send copies of such Orders, Rules and Notifications directly to the Directorate of Translations and also copies of those orders should be sent in duplicate to the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms ... The Directorate of Translation should translate those ... Orders/Rules/Notifications into the concerned minority languages and forward the same to the Director, Department of Information and to the concerned Deputy Commissioners."

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