Political parties have demanded action against AYUSH Ministry Secretary Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha for asking non-Hindi speaking delegates to leave a virtual training programme, with DMK president M.K. Stalin terming his action as arising out of “linguistic arrogance”.

In a statement, Mr. Stalin accused the Central government of attempting to impose Hindi. “The Centre’s first agenda seems to be Hindi imposition. It is working to destroy all languages of all the States and is bent on destroying Tamil, instead of giving the classical language its due respect,” he said.

Referring to the incident at the airport where DMK MP and his sister Kanimozhi was questioned about her being an Indian citizen since she did not speak Hindi, he said if the government had taken action against the officer at that time itself, the AYUSH issue would not have happened.

He asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take strict action against Mr. Kotecha and ensure such incidents are not repeated in future.

Ms. Kanimozhi and Congress MP S. Jothimani wrote to Shripad Naik, Minister of State, Ministry of AYUSH, seeking action against the official. “I would like to remind you about the promise made by the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru on August 7, 1959, on the floor of the Lok Sabha that as long as the non-Hindi speaking States require English as an associate language, it will continue,” Ms. Kanimozhi said.

Pointing out that Hindi and English were official languages of the Union and there were 22 languages listed as official lanaguages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, she demanded an inquiry into the incident and action against officials.

Ms. Jothimani, in her letter terming Mr. Kotecha’s actions as “callous attitude towards handling the pandemic”, said his action was disappointing, and demanded action against him.

TNCC president K.S. Alagiri said the action of the Secretary went against the provisions of the Constitution and recalled Mr. Nehru’s statement on the language policy. He demanded that the PM immediately order that all such training programmes would be held in Hindi and English.

MDMK general secretary Vaiko, Dravidar Kazhagam president K. Veeramani and PMK founder S. Ramadoss also condemned the AYUSH Secretary’s action.