Agartala, June 30: The Kokborok Academy has demanded inclusion of the language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution for its proper recognition and preservation.

A delegation of the academy, including poet Chandra Kanta Murasingh and authors Shefali Debbarma and Ajit Debbarma, met state tribal welfare minister Jitendra Chowdhury and submitted a memorandum to the President. The minister will send the memorandum to the President with the comments of the state government.

Murasingh, recipient of the Sahitya Academy?s Bhasa Samman, said the Kokborok Academy has also sought an appointment with the President to apprise him of the state of the language and why it deserves to be included in the Eighth Schedule.

?The Manipuris got their language listed in the Eighth Schedule in 1995 through a protracted agitation, but we are trying to have our demand accepted through goodwill. The agitation will be our last option,? Murasingh said, asserting that the academy?s other demand is to restore the original names of localities, rivers and lakes in Tripura.

?During the past five decades, many Kokborok names have been changed through mispronunciation. The original names need to be restored,? Murasingh said.

He said despite being recognised as an official language of the state way back in 1979, Kokborok is not used widely in administrative work, as barring the Assembly proceedings, no official record is maintained in the tribal language.

Murasingh said they would soon meet the president of the Tripura Board of Secondary Education (TBSE) Subrata Sengupta to press for introduction of Kokborok as a medium of examinations upto Class XII.

?Unless conditions are created to facilitate study of Kokborok at the school level, the language will never make any real progress,? Murasingh said.

The Kokborok Academy has undertaken a project to collect and publish folk literature in the language.