New Delhi, Aug 12 : As many as 117 endangered languages/mother tongues, spoken by less than 10,000 people, have been chosen from all over India for study and documentation under a Central government scheme, the Rajya Sabha was informed.

Minister of Minority Affairs Kiren Rijiju, in a written reply, said that Bharatavani, a digital knowledge platform dedicated to Indian languages, has represented 77 tribal languages, offering resources across language learning, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and glossaries.

Rijiju said that the Central government is promoting Sanskrit through three Central Universities, which are provided funds as per the requirement and utilisation.

The Central government has initiated a scheme known as "Scheme for Protection and

Preservation of Endangered Languages of India (SPPEL) for the preservation of languages, he said.

Under this Scheme, the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru, works on protection, preservation and documentation of all the mother tongues/languages of India spoken by less than 10,000 people, which are called endangered languages.

The minister said that the policy of the Government is to promote all Indian languages, including classical languages.

He said the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) works for the promotion of all Indian languages, including four classical languages like Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Odia.

Development and promotion of Classical Tamil is done by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil (CICT), Chennai, said the Minister.

In 2024-25, Rs 83.50 lakh each were spent on Kannada, Telugu, Odia and Malayalam. During this period, Rs 1,430 lakh were spent on Tamil, he said.

Elaborating on steps to promote mother tongues, the minister said, 'The Department of School Education and Literacy has implemented several key initiatives to advance early literacy and multilingual education across India, such as the development of 117 primers in 22 Scheduled and 99 Non-Scheduled languages, along with 52 additional primers in local and mother tongues by NCERT and CIIL.'

The government has taken several initiatives to promote Indian languages in higher education and technical fields, the Minister said.

The AICTE has provided engineering textbooks in 12 Indian languages. The first

Marathi-medium engineering batch from Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering (Pune), graduated successfully, he said.

Major exams like NET, CTET, NEET, JEE, CUET, and SSC are now conducted in 12 Indian languages. Additionally, the UGC allows students to write exams in local languages, irrespective of the medium of instruction, he said.

/IANS