2013 declared Telugu Development Year

- CM directs all departments to transact the business in Telugu - OLC appoints monitoring officers BH Ramakrishna Albeit rather belatedly, the state government has formally announced observing 2013 as Telugu Development Year. An official announcement was released by G Balaramaiah, Secretary of Cultural Affairs on Thursday. Though the detailed action plan will be announced later, possibly by April 11, i.e. Ugadi (Telugu New Year Day), government said that all the resolutions that were passed in the fourth World Telugu Conference held at Tirupathi in December last, would be implemented as part of the plan. "The aim is to proliferate Telugu culture and evoke interest of Telugu language and culture among all the people worldwide. For that, a concerted effort will be done," the GO said. A Government has already initiated steps to implement the usage of Telugu at various levels. It appoints Telugu Monitoring Officers in all government offices recently. "An officer of Deputy secretary level, working at OPs of all departments in Secretariat will act as language monitoring officer. Similarly, the joint collectors at districts, MDOs at Mandal level will act as LMOs. All these officers shall have to send a report to Secretary (Services) at GAD (Official language) by 5th every month," Mandali Buddha Prasad, Chairman of the Official Language Commission told The Hans India. The Chief Minister N Kirankumar Reddy has also in a second communiqué, directed that all the business transaction shall be done in Telugu only. "In continuation of his earlier direction on January 28, the Chief Minister said the all the letters, GOs, circulars, files, notices shall be done only in Telugu. Inter-departmental communiqués, any information with people, corporations and outside institutions and companies shall also be done in Telugu, CM directed. All the governmental appointments should be given in Telugu," N Shivashankar, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister (Services) explained. "Government has given orientation and training to all the secretarial staff at MCRHRD in the past on the usage of Telugu through computers. A second round of training will also be given to all the staff at MCRHRD and to employees of district collectorates at their respective offices. In a way, it is a massive effort for the betterment of our language" he further said. Government's slew of measures included making Telugu must for classes up to X, which will come into effect from the next academic year.