The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), a key ally of the BJP, on Thursday said it will take up the issue of restoration of Punjabi as an official language in the Union Territory (UT) of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah besides raising the issue in Parliament.

A decision to this effect was taken at a high-level meeting of the party which was presided over by SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal.

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It was decided that the party would seek a change in the draft legislation seeking to make Urdu, Kashmiri, Dogri, Hindi and English official languages of J&K by seeking inclusion of Punjabi language in this list.

Speaking on the occasion, the SAD president said there was widespread resentment amongst Sikhs and Punjabis living in J&K as well as Punjabis worldwide at the discriminatory manner in which Punjabi had been excluded as an official language of the J&K by the UT administration.

He said Punjabi had been given the status of an official language in the erstwhile constitution of the J&K state and said this status should be retained in the present dispensation also.

Speaking at the meeting, senior leaders including Balwinder Singh Bhundur, Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra, Sikander Singh Maluka and Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said more than twenty lakh people in J&K speak Punjabis and that Punjabis constituted more than three per cent of the population of the union territory.

They pointed out that besides Punjabi had always enjoyed a special status in J&K. Badal assured the party leaders that he would take up this issue forcefully with the centre as well as raise the issue in Parliament to ensure the due status of Punjabi language was restored.

He said Punjabi was embedded in the culture of J&K from the time of the Khalsa Raj and was widely used as a medium of instruction. “Punjabi was a compulsory subject like Urdu in J&K till 1981.

Any attempt to dislodge it as an official language in J&K is an assault on the identity of the Sikh community in the State”, the SAD president added.

He said the move to remove Punjabi as an official language was against the spirit of the constitution whose founding fathers were inspired by the vision of India as a multi-religious, multicultural and multilingual nation.