An echo of the street protests against the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) was heard in the Lok Sabha on Thursday with Opposition members criticising the government for the police action on the protesters.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said the government was seized of the matter, and assured the House that it was not a partisan issue as members from the government side were also agitated over it.
“Beyond just Hindi”“It is not a Hindi or a non-Hindi issue,” he said in response to the views expressed by the members, underscoring that “it is an issue of regional languages also.”
While some members tried to raise the issue at the start of the House proceedings, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said she would not allow the Question Hour to be derailed. Raising the matter after Question Hour, Samajwadi Party MP Dharmendra Yadav questioned the “double standards” of the Narendra Modi government, which, on the one hand, was trying to promote the use of Hindi and, on the other, had turned a “deaf ear” to civil service aspirants from Hindi and other linguistic backgrounds.
