Odisha to observe March 11 as ‘Shastriya Odia Bhasa Divas’

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Jan 17:

The Odisha government today decided to observe March 11 as ‘Shastriya Odia Bhasa Divas’.

A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the Shastriya Bhasa Advisory Committee presided over by Tourism and Culture minister Ashok Panda at the State Secretariat here.

The meeting discussed the setting up of a Central institute on Odia language and decided to request the Centre to allocate funds for this purpose.

For coordination of various ongoing work relating to classical Odia of the proposed Central institute, it was decided that a special cell would be set up at the Odisha Sahitya Akademi.

Besides, a committee of representatives of the Culture department would visit Tamil Nadu and Kerala to study the functioning of the cell.

Secretary, Tourism and Culture, Arabinda Padhee hailed eminent litterateurs and all those whose relentless efforts resulted in Odia language being accorded the coveted classical language status.

Among others, president of Odisha Sahitya Akademi Satakadi Hota, linguist Dr Debi Prasanna Patnaik, Jnanpeeth awardee Dr Prativa Ray and litterateurs Shantanu Kumar Acharya, wirter and columnist Gourahari Das, Dr Khageswar Mohapatra, Prof Rajkishore Mishra, Dr Basant Kumar Panda, Dr Kailash Chandra Tikayat Ray, Aswini Kumar Mishra, Dr Debendranath Jena, vice chancellor, Utkal University of Culture, director Culture, Sushil Kumar Das, secretary, Odisha Sahitya Akademi Bishnu Prasad Mishra and representative of Odia Bhasa Pratisthan Hadibandhu Singh Sardar were present at the meeting.