By IANS
Ranchi : Speaker of the Jharkhand Assembly Aalamgir Aalam Tuesday directed the state government to take steps to accord second official language status on Bengali within the next 45 days.
The issue of giving the official language status to Bengali and Santhali languages rocked the assembly after Annapurna Devi, a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) legislator, raised the issue during a call attention motion.
The RJD legislator’s demand was seconded by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and Forward Bloc, which said that the 1991 census report should be taken into consideration for according the second official language status to Bengali and Santhali.
Agreeing with the demand, the speaker said: “The state government should do the needful to accord second language status to Bengali within 45 days.” According to 1991 census report, more than nine percent population in the state speaks Bengali.
Deputy Chief Minister Stephen Marandi said the state government would take a decision once it gets the census report of 2001 from the registrar general of India.