Shastriya Odia Bhasa Divas

Odisha celebrates the Shastriya Odia Bhasa Divas March 11. The day is  to commemorate the day as on this day in 2014 the Centre had issued a gazette notification declaring Odia as a classical language.   As per rules after getting the classical language status, Odia became the sixth language of the country to get classical language status after the Centre bracketed it with Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.. In the year 2015, the Odisha government decided to observe the day as the ‘Shastriya Odia Bhasa Divas’. Once a language is declared classical, it gets financial assistance for setting up a centre of excellence for the study of that language. It also opens up an avenue for two major awards for scholars of eminence.The centre of excellence after a lot of delays started in 2020 and an amount of Rs 140 crore, which the central government should have given for the Odia language development.