Will soon make an announcement, says Stalin amid NEP row
Amid the ongoing war on language and delimitation between the DMK-led Tamil Nadu government and the Union government, a special calling attention motion by legislators of the ruling alliance was moved on the first issue
Accusing the BJP-led Union government of treating states as enslaved regions by imposing three languages, Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin on Tuesday said in the ongoing assembly session that he would soon make an announcement that will uphold the native Tamil language and states’ rights.
Amid the ongoing war on language and delimitation between the DMK-led Tamil Nadu government and the Union government, a special calling attention motion by legislators of the ruling alliance was moved on the first issue. The state has refused to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) and its three-language formula which it stated was the BJP’s way of imposing Hindi.
The state government in its 2025-2026 budget allotted funds from its own treasury to compensate the ₹2,152 crore withheld by the Union government under the Samagra Shiksha (SS) scheme. Stalin said that even if they have to forego central funds, they will not rethink the two-language policy of the state which follows English and Tamil since 1968.
“Even if the Centre gives ₹10,000 crore, we won’t accept a three-language formula,” Stalin said. “This is not about money, but about the ethnicity of Tamils. It is about protecting the young generation of Tamil Nadu.”
Legislators from all political parties, except the BJP, participated in the debate and asked the Tamil Nadu government to ensure that the decades-long two-language formula is not changed. Tamil Nadu’s principal opposition, AIADMK, too supported the DMK on the language issue. Referring to Leader of Opposition and AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami’s visit to New Delhi on Tuesday morning to meet leaders of his former ally BJP, Stalin asked the party MLAs to urge their leader to raise the issue with the central leadership.
Stalin recalled how DMK’s first chief minister CN Annadurai moved a resolution in the assembly in 1968 to adopt a two-language policy which put the state on the world map for over half-a-century. “We are not slaves to mortgage our ethnic identity just for receiving funds from them (the Union government),” he said.
“If there are obstacles, we will break them. Social justice and the protection of Tamil language are the two eyes of this government…We hold on to the bilingual policy because it is a fact that if we allow another language to be imposed, the local language will disappear.. Only by ensuring state autonomy and upholding states’ rights, we can protect Tamil language and elevate it to a new level. I will soon make an announcement on this,” he said.
Stalin’s statement is the latest attack against the BJP. On March 22, Stalin led a Joint Action Committee’s meeting in Chennai with chief ministers of three states and political leaders of four other states demanding that the BJP conduct a fair delimitation and not an exercise based on population which penalises states such as Tamil Nadu for controlling population.
In response, BJP Tamil Nadu president K Annamalai said NEP’s three-language policy means that a student can learn multiple languages and it was not an imposition of Hindi. “By distorting the three-language policy as Hindi imposition again in the House today, the DMK has reaffirmed that only those with money can learn multiple languages,” he said.