Lok Sabha Debates
Need To Include Manipuri Language On The Currency Notes. on 2 March, 2016
Sixteenth Loksabha an> Title: Need to include Manipuri language on the currency notes.
DR. THOKCHOM MEINYA (INNER MANIPUR) : The Eighth Schedule lists languages that the Government of India has the responsibility to develop. The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution originally included 14 languages. Sindhi was included by the 21st Amendment, enacted in 1967. The Seventy-first Amendment of the Constitution of India, officially known as the Constitution (Seventy-first Amendment) Act, 1992, amended the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution so as to include Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali languages, thereby raising the total number of languages listed in the schedule to eighteen. Bodo, Dogri, Santhali and Maithali were included to the Eighth Schedule in 2004 through the 92nd Amendment, raising the total number of languages to 22.
There have been demands for inclusion of Manipuri language on the currency notes of the country. Earlier the language was written in Bengali script. Now, the original script is being used to write the Manipuri language and last year the students of Class X had appeared their HSLC Examination using the original script.
Hence, I do strongly urge upon the Union Government, the Ministry of Home Affairs in particular to issue an advisory to the Reserve Bank of India to include Manipuri language on the Currency Notes of the country as is being done for other languages.