Hindi Diwas is being celebrated throughout the country today. President Pranab Mukherjee will present the Rajbhasha awards at Rashtrapati Bhawan.

• The Rajbhasha awards were instituted by the Department of Official Language of Home Ministry to recognize the excellent contribution of Ministries, Departments and Nationalized Banks in the field of Hindi.

• Hindi Diwas is celebrated on September 14 every year because on this day in 1949, the Constituent Assembly of the country adopted Hindi language as the official language of the Republic of India.

• It serves to promote and propagate the Hindi language. The day is celebrated in the schools, colleges, offices, organizations and other enterprises as a Hindi Diwas with the unique programs and competitions organized related to Hindi poems, story recitations and vocabulary quizzes.

• Hindi is spoken as a native language by 500 million people and is recognized as the 2nd most-spoken language in the world. . The decision of using Hindi as the official language was ratified by the Constitution of India that came into effect on 26 January 1950. Under the Article 343 of the Indian Constitution, Hindi written in Devanagari script was adopted as the official language. Now there are 22 Scheduled languages of India. Among them, 2 languages are officially used at Union government of India level: Hindi and English.