The Uttar Pradesh government has directed all the government health facilities in the State to have signboards and nameplates written in Urdu also. In a directive issued to all the district Chief Medical Officers (CMOs), the government asked them to make sure that the signboards and nameplates on display in the district hospitals, primary health centres and other health facilities were written in Urdu along with Hindi.
The directive issued by the State health department’s director, following a complaint by Mohammed Harun, a resident from Unnao district in Uttar Pradesh, who in his petition said that in many government offices, including the health department, the signboards in Urdu were missing despite it being the second official language of U.P. Afterwards the government issued a fresh directive to the CMOs to have the information in Urdu also on signboards, nameplates and other signages in all the 167 district hospitals, 2,934 primary health centres and 873 community health centres across the State.
Uttar Pradesh adopted Urdu as the second official language through the UP Official Language (Amendment) Act, I989, which added Section 3 to the UP Official Languages Act, 1951. As per the 2011 Census, 5.4 per cent people chose Urdu as their mother tongue while more than 80 per cent selected Hindi.
The directive has come at a time when the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is being criticised by various Muslim groups over the recent decision to conduct a survey of unrecognised madrasas in the State.
