Patil to present awards tomorrow to encourage use of Hindi

New Delhi, Sept 13 (UNI) Home Minister Shivraj Patil will present 44 prizes and awards, including the Rajiv Gandhi National Award for Original book writing on Gyan Vigyan and Indira Gandhi Rajbhasha award, to encourage the use of Hindi and original writing in the official language of the country.

Mr Patil, who will be the Chief Guest at Hindi Diwas Celebration of the Department of Official Language in the Ministry of Home Affairs, will present the awards in the form of shield/cash. The meeting will be presided over by Minister of State for Home Affairs Manik Rao H Gavit.

The department frames the policies, including rules, following the provisions of the Constitution in regard to the official language and the implementation of those policies is also its responsibility.

It has been a motto to propagate the official language among the central government employees, including Public Sector Undertakings, Corporations, banks and others through encouragement, persuasion and goodwill.

Publications brought out by the Department of Official Language is another important instrument in the field of publicity of Official Language. A quarterly magazine in the name of 'Rajbhasha Bharti' is regularly published by the Department. This year a special issue of the magazine on technology is being released during the celebration.

In addition to this, the latest edition of 'compilation of orders regarding the use of Hindi' is also being released. The last edition of the compilation was published in 1996.

To impart training to the Central Government employees, including employees of Public Sector Undertakings, Corporations, Banks and others, training classes are organised on a regular/part time basis under the Hindi Teaching Scheme. To facilitate the trainees, textbooks, reading materials, test papers and other training materials are also published from time to time.

To modernise the training system and language learning process various softwares have been developed with the assistance of C-DAC, Pune. These are primarily in the fields of Hindi teaching through various regional languages, (Lila series) translation from English to Hindi (Mantra) and automatic typing out of Hindi dictation/speech (Shrutlekhan) on the computer.

Continuous efforts are made to improve these language application tools based on the feedback received from users.

UNI