Yarlagadda blames officials for neglecting Telugu language

Tirupati: Rajya Sabha member Yarlagadda Lakshmi Prasad blamed the IAS officers for not implementing the government orders to shift the Telugu Language Centre from Mysore to Hyderabad four years ago. He attended as the chief guest in the valedictory session of three-day national seminar organised by Centre for Classical Languages of India at senate hall in SVU here on Wednesday. Addressing the gathering, he said the Central government has given an order to shift the centre from CCLI Mysore to Hyderabad, but no official of Andhra Pradesh has taken the initiative even after four years. This shows the interest on the official language of State, he added. He pointed that Tamil Nadu government has shifted its office to Chennai by allotting a dedicated building at prime location in first year itself for developing and research of their official language, but it was not seen in Andhra Pradesh. Praising the Tamil-speaking people and Tamil Nadu government for their love over official language, he expected the same in this State also. With the pressure of Tamil speaking people on their political leaders, the DMK has brought pressure on UPA and succeeded in putting the issue in the election manifesto in 2004 and the President of India also pointed about the classical status to Tamil language in his speech in 2005, Yarlagadda observed. The Kannada language has got classical status after Tamil and AP government reacted very late, he said. "With the delay in shifting our centre to Hyderabad from Mysore, we have lost more than Rs 6 crores of the Central funds," he pointed out. He stressed that the formation of a separate ministry for Telugu language is essential at this juncture, especially in the backdrop of the announcement made by Chief Minister on the eve of the fourth World Telugu Conference, which was held in December last year in Tirupati. "Once this ministry was formed, we can work effectively to resume the research activities," he said. He deplored that even though the national official language was Hindi, 30 central universities don't have Hindi departments out of the total 44 universities. By next year 22 universities will start Hindi departments, he pointed.