West Bengal announces Telugu as official language of state

West Bengal education Minister Partha Chatterjee said that Telugu community people of the state were demanding this for a long time and the decision to make Telugu an official language of the state has been decided mainly considering the demand of the large number of Telugu community from Kharagpur."

Kolkata: The West Bengal Government on Tuesday announced Telugu as an official language of the state in the cabinet meeting.

State Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said, "Telugu community people of the state were demanding this for a long time. A team of representatives led by Pradeep Sarkar, MLA, Kharagpur Sadar, also met the government. In this context, today, government has decided to declare Telugu as an official language. It has been decided mainly considering the demand of the large number of Telugu community from Kharagpur."

Earlier, besides Bengali and English, Nepali, Urdu, Santhali, Hindi, Odia, Punjabi, Rajbangshi, Kamtapuri, Kurmali and Kurukh were declared as official language of the state.

Also, the proposal of declaring Telugu community as the language-minority status has been accepted.