KATHMANDU, Oct 17: Nepali Congress (NC) leader Dhan Raj Gurung, speaking in parliament on Sunday has opposed the idea of adopting Hindi also as official language of Nepal.
Gurung termed the demand of some leaders of Madhes-based political parties to declare Hindi also as an official language of the country along with Nepali anti-nationalist and interference against lingual tolerance.
Limbu language declared official language
"Hindi is less spoken language in Tarai-Madhes region than Maithili, Bhojpuri, Tharu and Urdu. Instead of demanding Maithali, which is mother language of three million people in Tarai-Madhes the demand of declaring Hindi, which is spoken by only 77,000 people, as official language of the country itself is intriguing," said Gurung.
He accused the leaders of showing unnecessary obsession toward the Hindi language, which is official language of India. A few weeks ago, NC lawmaker Devkaran Prasad Kalwar speaking in parliament had demanded declaring Hindi as an official language of the country along with Nepali and English. Earlier, other leaders of Madhes-based political parties had raised the same demand publicly.
Meanwhile, CPN-UML lawmaker Rajan Bhattarai sought the prime minister's clarification in parliament about the government's foreign policy. "The current ruling coalition partners had promised to maintain balanced foreign policy while toppling the former government, but the ongoing activities of the government show imbalanced foreign policy," said Bhattarai. He accused the government of tilting toward India and failing to finalize the visit of the Chinese president to Nepal although the government sent an special envoy to China.
Speaking during the special hour, he further alleged that the prime minister took the internal political issues to international meetings and failed to implement his public announcements.
Yogendra Tamang of CPN (Maoist Center) demanded autonomy for the to-be delineated local units and criticized the political parties for 'trying to limit the rights of local units'.
Yogendra Chaudhary of the Madhesi People's Rights Forum-Democratic accused the major political parties of trying to delay the local polls.
