NCP dashes letter to Sonia protesting CLP suggestion on Marathi

Panaji, Feb 21 (UNI) Seeking immediate intervention of the Congress president Sonia Gandhi to stall the Congress' purported move for treating Marathi as official language along with Konkani, Deputy Chief Minister and NCP state president Dr Wilfred de Souza said such an action would have serious repercussions in the coming assembly elections.

''The NCP strongly opposes amendment of the proposed Goa Official Language Act to include Marathi as another official language. This goes against the decision taken by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who declared Konkani as the sole official language of Goa and got it passed through the Act in 1987,'' Dr De Souza told Ms Gandhi in a letter today.

Releasing copies of the letter, Dr De Souza said the Congress party could not reverse the decision twenty years later in this regard and that it would have serious repercussions on the coming elections to the state assembly.

He, hoWever, made it clear that he was not opposed to use of any script, Roman or Devanagari, in Konkani language and that there should not be any ''discrimination of the language'' on the basis of the script.

He said he would issue a party whip before the coming Assembly session next month to vote against the amendment, if any, providing for official language status to Marathi on par with Konkani.

UNI