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Ahead of the Assembly elections due later this year, the BJP-led Karnataka government has constituted a committee to study the possibility of making Tulu the second official language of the state.
Kannada and Culture Minister V Sunil Kumar Monday said he has constituted a committee headed by Alva’s Education Foundation chairman Mohan Alva and sought a report in a week’s time.
Tulu is spoken in the coastal districts of Karnataka like Udupi and Dakshina Kannada and there has been a long-standing demand to make Tulu an official language of the state. The two districts comprise 12 Assembly seats. However, the decision might influence the poll outcome in eight Assembly constituencies in neighbouring Uttara Kannada district as well.
According to the 2011 census, the Tulu-speaking population in the country was around 18.46 lakh. In the Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, Tulu, Konkani, and Byari (a dialect of Malayalam) are spoken widely.
In 2008, the then chief minister, BS Yediyurappa, took steps to accord official language status to Tulu but the initiative did not make much headway.
Opposition leaders from the coastal region, like All India Congress Committee (AICC) spokesperson Lavanya Ballal Jain, welcomed Sunil Kumar’s announcement but demanded that Tulu be added to the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution as well.
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