Make Punjabi main subject, Harjot Bains writes to Centre

The state government has demanded immediate action to restore Punjabi as a main subject in the CBSE curriculum for Class 10 in Punjab schools.

Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains today wrote a letter to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, mentioning “a deliberate sidelining of Punjabi” in the recently proposed CBSE exam pattern for Class X. He said the Central Government should intervene and rectify what he termed as a direct attack on the linguistic and cultural identity of Punjab.

Yesterday, the government had issued a notification making Punjabi a mandatory main subject in all schools in the state, regardless of their educational board affiliation.

Bains said as per the CBSE’s new scheme, only five main subjects — mathematics, science, social science, English and Hindi — were listed for regular board exams, effectively removing Punjabi from the category of main subjects and making it to an optional language, whose exam would be held alongside foreign languages in a single day.