The Trinamool Congress-led Bangla Government, as a policy, gives equal respect to all languages. The government has given several languages the status of official language to give them credibility and make people aware of them.
Last year, the West Bengal Official Language (Second Amendment) Bill, 2018 was passed to make Kamtapuri, Rajbongshi and Kurmali official State languages. Earlier, Kurukh had achieved the status through the West Bengal Official Language (Amendment) Bill, 2018.
The Ol-Chiki script is widely promoted by the government as the medium for writing the Santhali language. Santhali-speaking students can now write their State board secondary and higher secondary exams in the Ol-Chiki script.
Both Santhali and Urdu were introduced as subjects in the State Eligibility Test (SET) conducted by the WBCSC in 2015.
At the undergraduate level, Arabic is being taught in 42 colleges, Nepali in 10 colleges, Persian in three colleges (under the University of Calcutta), Tibetan in one college (Darjeeling Government College, under North Bengal University).
Hindi-medium general degree colleges have been set up in Banarhat (Jalpaiguri district), Asansol (Paschim Bardhaman) and Hatighisha (Darjeeling district).
At the postgraduate level, Arabic is being taught in 10 universities, Nepali at North Bengal University and Tamil at the University of Calcutta.
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