Mysuru’s Classical Kannada Centre may soon get autonomy: KDA chairman Bilimale

KDA demands autonomy for Classical Kannada Centre, raises concerns about non-Kannada speaking bank staff to Finance Minister.

Kannada Development Authority (KDA) chairman, Purushothama Bilimale, on Saturday reiterated the KDA’s demand for granting autonomy to the Mysuru-based Centre of Excellence for Studies in Classical Kannada, separating its functions from the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru.

“Bringing the Classical Kannada Centre under the CIIL was a wrong move by the Union government, and it has impaired its activities. This has been admitted by the government itself as the nature of work of the centre and the CIIL were entirely different,” he told reporters.

We have apprised the situation to Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan who has assured to accord autonomy to the centre,” he said.

Prof. Bilimale said the KDA and the pro-Kannada organisations are demanding autonomy for the centre and want it to be brought under the State government, similar to the Classical Tamil Centre, which operates under the Tamil Nadu State government.

“However, the Minister has stated that other classical centres will remain under the Union government. For political reasons, the Classical Tamil language Centre has been brought under the State government. While this cannot be done for other classical languages now, autonomy can still be granted to all centres,” he said.

The KDA chairman also said that the issue of non-Kannada speaking staff members in public sector banks in the State has been raised with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The cause for concern is the decline in the number of Kannada-speaking banking staff which has caused problems for the locals in extending banking services.

While there is a rule that there has to be some Kannada-speaking staff and non-Kannadigas have to learn Kannada in three months, the question is whether it is being implemented in banks as customers have been complaining of difficulty due to language issues, said Prof. Bilimale.