Tamil Nadu’s DMK government will strive to make all languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, including Tamil, as the Union government’s administrative and official languages.  The government would work tirelessly and relentlessly to include all languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution as the official language of the Union government, , Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said in a statement on Sunday.

The Chief Minister said that on June 6, 2004, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, accepted the demand for declaring Tamil as a classical language. The official notification was issued on October 12, 2004.

Recalling former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi’s efforts at making Tamil a classical language, Mr. Stalin said several Tamil scholars had demanded the status for the ancient language.

The 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule are Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

According to Article 343 of the Constitution, the official language of the Union government is Hindi in Devanagiri script, while Article 345 states that a state legislature may by law adopt any one or more language for all or any of the official purposes of that state.

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