The chief minister of Punjab, Captain Amarinder Singh has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to include Punjabi in the list of official languages of Jammu and Kashmir.
To support his demand, he mentioned Punjab’s historic links with Jammu and Kashmir since the time when Maharaja Ranjit Singh used to rule the state. Amarinder Singh wrote a letter to the Prime Minister.
In this letter, he urged the PM to direct the Union ministry of home affairs to include Punjabi as one of the official languages of the union territory. He said that the Punjabi community is upset over exclusion of their language from the list.
Amarinder Singh wrote that Jammu and Kashmir used to be a part of Punjab during the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the 19th-century Sikh ruler, and Punjabi was one of the widely spoken languages of the region. When Jammu and Kashmir became an independent state, Punjabi was one of the most widely spoken languages in the region. Punjabi is the mother tongue of all Punjabis in the Jammu region and is also being spoken by the Punjabi community living in the Kashmir Valley.
The chief minister of Punjab wrote that under the Jammu and Kashmir Languages Bill, 2020 which both the houses of Parliament passed with a voice vote in September last year, Kashmiri, Dogri and Hindi were added to the list of official languages of J&K, with already existing Urdu and English. However, Punjabi was not added to this list.
When the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Bill, 2020 was being passed by Rajya Sabha last year, Minister of State for Home G. Kishan Reddy said that the government would also encourage other local languages like Punjabi, Gurjari and Pahari in the region.
