JAMMU: Admonishing the BJP-led government at the Centre for its perpetual bias against Jammu region, Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) on Wednesday staged a protest against the Saffron Party for wrongfully excluding ‘Dogri’ from the language panel of new currency notes.
Panther activists spearheaded by Harsh Dev Singh Chairman JKNPP and former Minister, Balwant Singh Mankotia State President and Yash Paul Kundal State President Young Panthers assembled at Exhibition Ground, here and raised anti-government slogans.
Accusing the BJP for disparaging and ignoring Dogri and Jammu Pradesh during the printing of new currency notes, He divulged that the language panel of the currency notes issued in November 2016 exhibited their amounts printed in 15 regional languages vis-à-vis Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and two National languages ie English and Hindi; but it deplorably failed to mention the denomination of notes in Dogri script.
He said that Dogri language had been recognized and incorporated in the 8th schedule of the Constitution of India by virtue of 92nd Constitution Amendment Act which automatically entitled it to be mentioned in the language panel of the new currency notes on the pattern of other regional languages. Singh further pointed out that earlier the J&K High Court had also passed an order last year in 2015 in a Public Interest Litigation for due recognition to Dogri, making official announcements at Railway Stations and Airports etc in Dogri and inclusion of Dogri language in the language panel of the new currency notes.
Expressing indignation over the humiliation of Dogri language, Harsh dubbed it as a venomous doze of discrimination administered to Jammu region and regretted that while the Kashmiri language discernibly appeared on the language panel of the new currency notes, Dogri language had been wrongfully omitted and downplayed in consonance with the discriminatory policies of the Central and the State governments. He lamented that Dogri was blatantly ignored in the BJP government which always pronounced itself as ‘messiah’ of the Dogras. He said that the Saffron party had forgotten the linguistic values and the pristine glory of the Dogras while satiating its hunger for power. He exhorted the Central government and the Governor RBI to take serious cognizance of the issue and rectify the anomaly on the new currency notes failing which the Panthers party would launch a campaign against the sacrilege of Dogri language.
Prominent among others who spoke on the occasion included Rajesh Padgotra, Nirmal Kesar, Khajoor Singh, Naresh Chib, Neeraj Gupta, Shankar Singh, K.K Sharma, Narinder Sharma and Satvir.