New Delhi:
Two members of the parliament committee on official languages have clearly spelt their discontent with the manner in which hindi, our national language is used or rather abused by parliamentarians.
They say the language is insulted on almost a daily basis and now plan to take their complaint to the president.
BJP's Ramesh Bais regrets he lost his cool on Wednesday afternoon.
At a meeting of committee of parliament on official languages he tore to shreds a performance report by some government deptartments - on what they had done to promote hindi.
Bais says officials came with handwritten and shoddy reports.
Worse the bureaucrats said no to more official work in Hindi - their plea was working in hindi compromises official secrets.
"This is a case of total disregard to the official language," claims Bais, Member, Committee of Parliament on Official languages.
Bais was not the only angry member.
Satyavrat Chaturvedi, the deputy chairman of the committee wants to take his complaint to the President.
I won't say anything on camera, I will inform the president of India," said Chaturvedi.
The Home Minister is the chairman of the committee.
The incident comes in the middle of a nationwide Hindi fortnight from the 1 September.
It's Hindi day on the 14 September
Members say 63 years after independence, if Hindi struggles to establish itself as a pan-Indian official language; it's not for lack of funds.
The central and state governments spend crores each year to promote it.
In the last 10 years, Dept of Languages alone received over Rs 200 crore, rough estimates show.
Central/ state governments spend Rs 300 crore annually to promote Hindi.
It is mandatory for every government department, ministry, nationalised bank, institute and PSU, to have a hindi division.
Each division has at least 10 officials.
State governments too have similar mechanism.
"The indifference amounts to insult. The officials don't want to work. Despite this ... not even 20 per cent work in government offices is done in hindi... And if things are bad with Hindi.... other national languages are worse off," said Prabhat Jha, Member, Committee of Parliament on Official Languages.
In 1917 in Bharuch Mahatma Gandhi had said, "Hindi has all the credentials to be India's national language. But things have changed in a way since then. The idea is not whether we are comfortable with president's house not rashtrapati bhawan, or parliament not sansad bhawan. The question is if crores are spent - someone has to be accountable for that."