J&K will have 5 official languages, Lok Sabha clears bill

NEW DELHI: Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed Jammu & Kashmir Official Languages (Amendment) Bill, which makes Kashmiri, Dogri and Hindi, apart from Urdu and English, as official languages of J&K.
Section 47 of the J&K Reorganisation Act states that the Legislative Assembly may by law adopt any one or more of the languages in use in UT of J&K or Hindi as the official language or languages.Since Parliament is exercising all powers of the legislative assembly right now, the Bill was moved in Parliament. The bill is due to come up in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
Government has justified the "official language" status for Kashmiri , Dogri and Hindi saying that Urdu and English are spoken by less than 1% of the population.
Union home minister Amit Shah hailed the passage of the bill in Lok Sabha as "a momentous day" for the people of the Union Territory.
"I thank PM @narendramodi ji for his commitment towards restoring the culture of Jammu & Kashmir through this Bill," Shah tweeted adding that the J&K Bill also provides for special efforts to be made "towards the development of major regional languages like 'Gojri', 'Pahari' and 'Punjabi'."

As per 2011 Census data, no more than 0.17% of the people of the existing UT of J&K speak Urdu and English, the two official languages of the state since the year 1957. While Urdu, spoken by 0.16%, was the official language of the state as per the arrangement prior to reorganisation of state of J&K, English (spoken by just 0.01% of the population of J&K) was the official working language, particularly as Article 348(1) specifies English as the language for proceedings of the Supreme Court, High court and for parliamentary bills.
In comparison, Census 2011 returned share of Kashmiri-speaking people in J&K as 53.25%, Dogri-speaking as 20.64%, and Hindi-speaking as 2.3%.
"It is an interesting fact that in the past seven decades, not even 1% of the people were speaking the two official languages. J&K Official Languages Bill seeks to correct this," noted the functionary.
The Bill also seeks to promote some other regional languages: Gojri, spoken by 9.32% of J&K's population; Pahadi (spoken by 8.03%) and Punjabi (spoken by 1.78%).