• Article 345 (Part XVII) of the Indian Constitution deals with a State’s power to adopt one or more languages used in the State, or Hindi, for the State’s official purposes.
    • The legislature of a State may, by law, adopt any one or more of the languages in use in the State, or Hindi, as the official language(s) for all or any of its official purposes.
    • The language chosen by a State does not have to be listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution; it simply needs to be a language in use within that State (or Hindi).
    • Until the State Legislature enacts a law to the contrary, English continues to be used for all State official purposes for which it was used before the commencement of the Constitution.
    • Article 345 operates subject to provisions governing inter-State and Union–State communications (Article 346) and the President’s power to recognize a language spoken by a substantial section of a State’s population (Article 347).
  • Recent Update: Tulu became the official language of Karnataka.

 

Source: The Hindu

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