Scheduled Language

The languages, which are included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India are Scheduled languages and at present twenty-two languages namely, Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu are termed as Scheduled Languages. The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution originally included fourteen languages, after that Sindhi was included by the 21^st Amendment Act, enacted in 1967. The number of Scheduled languages was fifteen at the time of presentation of 1981 data and three more languages viz. Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali were added to the Eighth Schedule with passing of the 71^st Amendment Act in 1992 to the Constitution of India taking the total number of Scheduled languages to eighteen at time of presentation of Census 1991 data. Four more languages viz., Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santali were added to the Eighth Schedule with passing of the 92^nd Amendment Act to the Constitution of India enacted in 2004 and this resulted the total number of Scheduled languages to twenty two. Accordingly, data has been presented for the Census 2011. Out of 270 identifiable Mother Tongues which returned by 10,000 or more speakers each at the All India level, 123 mother tongues are grouped under 22 Scheduled languages.