By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 5 Apr: For the first time after 2014, a meeting of the Uttarakhand Bhasha Sansthan was held at the Secretariat under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister, here, today. While presiding over the meeting of the Management Executive and General Body of the Bhasha Sanshtan, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami declared that budding writers in Garhwali, Kumaoni, Jaunsari and Hindi would be honoured every year by the government. He said that the Uttarakhand Sahitya Gaurav Samman will be given every year for long-term excellent writing and continuous literary service, for excellent epic /short poem composition in Hindi, poetry composition, fiction and other prose genres. Along with this, 4 budding writers in Garhwali, Kumaoni, Jaunsari and Hindi languages will be honoured every year. Excellent writers will be honoured with the above awards by organising a grand ceremony next month.
Along with this, Chief Minister Dhami also approved the proposal of giving partial grant as financial assistance to the creative writers from Uttarakhand, who are unable to publish their books due to lack of funds. Chief Minister Dhami also issued instructions to organise national and international level language conferences in every district of the state. This would be a multi-faceted plan of the Bhasha Sansthan, in which reading of research papers, exchange of ideas related to language, folk language conferences would also be organised. Dhami also directed the officials to set up digital/e-libraries in 1 primary school, each, in every district.
Approval was also granted to organise a book fair in the state in collaboration with the National Book Trust and organise literary seminars on the occasion. Along with this, lectures by well-known writers will be organised across the state. The CM said that the folk languages and dialects of Uttarakhand are its identity and pride. The state government is making continuous efforts for the protection and promotion of local languages, dialects and culture.
An agreement was also reached on the publication of literary and research journals by the Uttarakhand Bhasha Sansthan. Along with this, approval was also given for organising workshops and training programmes for standardisation of folk languages. Officials concerned informed that there are speakers and writers of Garhwali, Kumaoni and Jaunsari dialects in different parts of Uttarakhand, in whose writing there is an orthographic difference of words. There is a great need for standardisation of orthography and spelling of Garhwali and Kumaoni dialects. These camps would be organised in Garhwal and Kumaon divisions. District and state level linguistic competitions will also be held in the state to be organised by the Uttarakhand Bhasha Sansthan.
Languages Minister Subodh Uniyal, Secretary Vinod Prasad Raturi, Additional Secretary and Director, Uttarakhand Bhasha Sansthan, Swati Bhadoria, Member Dr Sulekha Dangwal, Prof Dinesh Chandra Shastri, Dr Sudha Pandey, Dr Harisuman Bisht and Prof Dev Pokharia and other members were present at the meeting.
