Senior IAS officer Girish Shankar has been appointed as Secretary of the Department of Official Language under the Home Ministry. Shankar is at present Additional Secretary in the Tourism Ministry. The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has approved the appointment of Shankar, a 1982-batch IAS officer of Bihar cadre, as Special Secretary in Tourism Ministry.

In another order, the competent authority has approved extension in tenure of M Gopal Reddy, Joint Secretary in the Home Ministry, for a period of two months beyond October 7. Reddy is a 1985-batch IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre.

Points to Note

• According to a study by People’s Linguistic Survey of India, 220 Indian languages have disappeared in the last 50 years, and that another 150 could vanish in the next half century as speakers die and their children fail to learn their ancestral tongues.
• Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Odia and Sanskrit are the classical languages of India.
• The Constitution of India has recognised 22 languages as the official languages of India. These are known as Scheduled Languages and constitute the major languages of the country.