Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas reignited a new debate on Hindi imposition after he alleged the draft of the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme’s (MPLADS) revised guideline released last month “enforces” Hindi language and “impairs” the basic principles of cooperative federalism.
The CPI(M) leader from Kerala wrote a letter to Union minister of state for statistics and programme implementation, planning and corporate affairs, Rao Inderjit Singh raising a number of other issues in relation to the draft guidelines.
“Para 3.23 of the new draft guidelines surreptitiously tries to introduce a new stipulation of erecting a plague at MPLADS project sites inscribing the details of work in Hindi language as well. No such condition was there in the existing guidelines,” Brittas said, Hindustan Times reported.
“GOI will say they are for all Indian languages but overtly and covertly thrust upon Hindi. Even the revised guidelines on MPLADS smacks of this – get the plaques written in Hindi too!” he tweeted sharing the government order.
GOI will say they are for all Indian languages but overtly and covertly thrust upon Hindi. Even the revised guidelines on MPLADS smacks of this – get the plaques written in Hindi too! pic.twitter.com/VCvashywuP
— John Brittas (@JohnBrittas) November 5, 2022
Brittas was responding to the Centre’s request for feedback on the revised MPLADS draft guidelines. The Member of Parliament said that the “enforced directive” to depict details of work in the Hindi language in non-Hindi-speaking states will be considered an infringement of federal principles.
“The selection of languages to be used in plaques may be left to the wisdom of respective MPs,” he added.
The CPI(M) leader further pointed out that the new draft guidelines suggest that the annual entitlement fund of Rs 5 crore will remain with the designated Central Nodal Agency (CNA) instead of the district authorities of the nodal districts of the concerned MPs.
As per the guideline, the required amount for the respective project will be directly credited to vendors’ accounts and the bank accounts of local authorities of nodal districts will be treated as pass-through accounts.
The Rajya Sabha MP further mentioned that the draft guidelines suggest closing down all existing accounts of district authorities under the MPLADS and transferring all unspent amounts to the CNA.
Read all the Latest Politics News here