Panel on languages soon: Vajpayee

CHENNAI, Sept 15 (UNI, PTI) — The Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee said here tonight that a committee would be set up soon to study the feasibility of treating all 19 languages included in Schedule 8 of the Constitution as official languages.

Addressing a rally to mark the 90th birth anniversary of Dravidian leader C.N. Annadurai organised by the BJP ally, the MDMK, on the sands of the Marina, Mr Vajpayee said the national agenda for governance, which was the policy blueprint for his government, had stated that a committee would be set up to study the feasibility.

He said Anna, who became a member of the Rajya Sabha in 1962 along with him, had wanted all Indian languages to be constitutionally treated as national languages.

The Prime Minister recalled that in one of the debates Anna had said, "I would press for the amendment of the Constitution to name all Indian languages as national languages" and pointed out that he had then endorsed Anna’s view.

Mr Vajpayee said while Anna’s love for his mother tongue, Tamil, was ‘boundless’, he was not anti-Hindi.

While the parties they headed — the Jan Sangh and the DMK — had differences on many counts, they had a high level of mutual admiration and affection.

The Prime Minister said time was the greatest teacher. In the time of Annadurai, many political and ideological differences separated the DMK from the Jan Sangh and other parties.

The coming together of the BJP and parties based on the legacy of Anna (both the AIADMK and the MDMK, which are allies of the BJP, claim Anna’s legacy) was a testimony to the strength of Indian democracy and Indian ethos, he said.

Mr Vajpayee described Annadurai as the tallest leader of the Tamil people in this century who occupied an honoured position among the great national personalities in post-Independence India.

Mr Vajpayee said as the foremost leader of the Dravidian movement, Anna gave voice to the principle of social justice and the need for reservations for the socially and educationally backward communities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Earlier, Mr Vajpayee arrived here on his first visit as Prime Minister that may lead to a future realignment of political forces in the state and to a rousing welcome from the DMK government and BJP allies — the MDMK, PMK and TRC. However, AIADMK supremo, Ms J. Jayalalitha, chose to be away.

The Chief Minister, Mr M. Karunanidhi, who heads the DMK, which of late has been warming up to a relationship with the BJP, threw a red carpet welcome, lining up his entire Cabinet at the airport and presented colourful shawls.

Mr Vaiko, who rebelled against Mr Karunanidhi and formed his MDMK five years ago, got together with the Chief Minister, for the first time since then, to welcome the Prime Minister.

KALPAKKAM: The Prime Minister on Tuesday lambasted the international nuclear regime calling it ‘highly distorted’ and deplored the hurdles placed in the area of technology transfer.

"It is unfortunate that the international nuclear regime today is highly distorted. On the one hand, the traditional nuclear weapon states want to keep the destructive power of nuclear technology in their own hands and resist nuclear disarmament."

"On the other hand, they restrict the enormous benefits of peaceful nuclear energy from reaching humanity at large that needs it most," Mr Vajpayee said, dedicating to the nation the Kalpakkam Atomic Reprocessing Plant (KARP) here, about 60 km from Chennai.

The completion of the KARP was an important milestone in India’s nuclear power programme, he said.

The KARP forms the link between spent fuel from the Madras atomic power station and the fuel for the 500 mw prototype fast-breeder reactor that would also be set up at the Indira Gandhi Centre here.

Congratulating the scientists and engineers of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) for successfully completing the KARP, the Prime Minister said the nuclear facility would form a critical link between the country’s pressurised heavy water reactor and the fast breeder programme.
Lauding the engineers, Mr Vajpayee said today was Engineers’ Day. He assured that the government would support all their endeavours in fulfilling the national mission to develop nuclear energy at a cheap cost.