Following a written request by South Goa MP Narendra Sawaikar on March 10, Singh in his written reply dated May 1, stated that ‘necessary corrections have been made in relevant records and also for further reference to parliament on questions on this subject’.
“In the original answer tabled in parliament, it was stated that the mode of answer is in Goan language. Since there is nothing called Goan language, it was and is my contention that the official answer has to be in terms of legal position. Hence I sent a copy of the Goa’s Official Language Act and requested to bear the same in mind while dealing with the issues,” said Sawaikar while speaking to Herald.
“Once I discovered this, I immediately brought it to the notice of the minister,” he added.
, while referring to a reply given by the government on March 10, to a query raised on Kissan call centres.
“In your communication, you have indicated that in the annexure to the reply, the language of Goa has been indicated as Goan whereas it should be Konkani and Marathi, both being the official languages of Goa as per the Goa Official Language Act, 1987,”said Singh in his letter to Sawaikar.
In the letter, Singh observed that ever since the launch of Kissan Call Centre (KCC) Scheme during 2014 , the Goan Language for responding to the farmers’ queries has been appearing in concerned records and accordingly previously answered questions on the same subject have mentioned ‘Goan for the language in which the queries over phone were answered’.
“Even the Konkani language spoken in Goa has been referred as Goan Konkani in a number of documents,” added Singh. He further reasoned that the term Goan language was thus used presumably to cover different languages spoken in Goa.
