Agartala, July 9 (IANS): Tripura has urged the UN to introduce Bengali as one of the world body's official languages, in the run-up to the 150th birth anniversary of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
"The assembly during its just concluded Budget Session passed a unanimous resolution urging the UN to make the Bengali language as one of the official languages," Assembly Secretary Subhas Bhattacharjee told IANS. He said the assembly resolution was sent on Thursday to the UN Secretary General through the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry.
"On the momentous occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore, the Tripura assembly resolves to urge the UN to introduce Bengali language as one of its official languages."
Seeking attention of the union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, Bhattacharjee in his letter to the HRD ministry secretary said: "The relations of the internationally acclaimed bard with the then kings of Tripura were extremely close and the poet had visited the state as many as seven times between 1899 and 1926."
Tripura's Information and Cultural Affairs Minister Anil Sarkar strongly supported the resolution and said: "With nearly 230 million speakers, Bengali is one of the most spoken languages, ranking fourth in the world."
At present, the UN has six official languages - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
"At the international level, Bangladesh also trying to gather opinion in favour of introducing Bengali language in the UN as one of the official languages," said Sarkar, who is also an award winning renowned poet and writer.
