Telangana govt to pass bill making Telugu a compulsory subject

Hyderabad, Mar 20: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao today asked officials to initiate measures for introducing Telugu as one of the compulsory subjects to be taught in all private and government schools in the state from the 2018-19 academic year.

A bill would be passed in the ongoing Budget session of the legislature to implement the policy, a release from Rao's office quoted him as saying. He had a meeting with a team of officials who visited Tamil Nadu to study the implementation of the mother tongue Tamil in educational institutions, it said.

Though the government initially thought of making Telugu a compulsory subject till the Intermediate (Plus Two), it has now decided to do so only up to 10th standard, it said. According to the release, initially it was thought that Telugu should be made a compulsory subject till the Intermediate level. But Intermediate course is not the same in all the institutions and it is difficult to introduce Telugu as a compulsory language at this stage, it said.

"After studying the mother tongue policy that is in implementation in Tamil Nadu and Punjab, we have decided to implement Telugu as a compulsory subject till tenth standard only for the present," Rao said. The state government has decided to make Telugu as one of the compulsory subjects in private and government schools to save the language, he said.

Rao, however, said "it has become a necessity for everyone these days to study in English medium." "Children's future should not be disturbed, and at the same time Telugu also should not be neglected. This is the reason why we are putting a condition that even children studying in the English medium should study Telugu as a subject," he said.

He has asked the Telugu Sahitya Academy and the Telugu University to prepare class-wise syllabus for Telugu to be taught, the release said. "The students should be taught through the mother tongue about the useful things in life besides protecting the Telugu language," Rao said.

PTI