Website : Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities

About

The linguistic minorities are considered as a group or collectivities of individuals residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language or script of their own.

Although the word linguistic minorities has not been defined in the Constitution of India, but the language of the minority group need not be one of the twenty two languages mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.

In a nutshell, Linguistic Minorities at the State level means any group or groups of people whose mother tongues are different from the principal language of the State, and at the district and taluka /tehsil levels, different from the principal language of the district or taluka/tehsil concerned.

Therefore, States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) 1956, recommended for creation of a mechanism to address the grievances of the Linguistic Minorities.

Based on the recommendations of the SRC, 7th Constitutional (Amendment) Act, 1957 was enacted, whereby Articles, 350 A & B were included in the Constitution.

Article 350-B provides for a Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities, who is known as the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities in India (CLM) to investigate all the matters relating to the Safeguards provided for the linguistic minorities in India under the Constitution and reporting to the President upon those matters at such intervals as the President may direct and the President causes all such reports to be laid before each House of the Parliament and sent to the Government/Administrations of States/UTs concerned.

Thus, the CLM Organization came into existence in July, 1957 at New Delhi. After a brief period it was shifted to Allahabad and now it has been shifted to New Delhi with effect from 1 June 2015.

Apart from the Safeguards under Article 29 and 30 of the Constitution, a Scheme of Safeguards was evolved at all India level from time to time at various fora like the Education Ministers Conference, 1949; Government of India Memorandum, 1956; Southern Zonal Council Decisions, 1959; Chief Ministers Conference, 1961 and Meeting of the Committee of Vice-Chairmen of Zonal Councils, 1961.

Therefore, CLM interacts with the linguistic minority groups and the States/UTs on all the matters pertaining to the issues concerning the implementation of the Constitutional and the nationally agreed Scheme of Safeguards for linguistic minorities.