Chennai: Joining issue with AIADMK coordinator O Panneerselvam who said the DMK government adopting double standards on the usage of Hindi, Minister for Tamil Official Language Thangam Thennarasu has said the Directorate of Information and Public Relations (DIPR) publicised the Chief Minister’s announcements in various languages (including Hindi) only to propagate the initiatives of the Tamilnadu government in other parts of the country.
He hit out at Panneerselvam, recalling that on 19 February, 2019, the then Chief Minister under the AIADMK government had released Hindi translations of Pathinenkeezkanakku. ‘If Panneerselvam had missed it, he could have checked with the then Minister for Tamil Development before issuing a statement,’ he said.
Earlier, Panneerselvam said that when Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently said that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages, Stalin opposed it saying it would wreck the nation’s integrity. Pointing to a news report in a Tamil daily on issuance of two official press notes also in Hindi by the Tamil Nadu government, OPS accused the DMK regime of ‘double standards’ on the language issue.