Jamshedpur, Nov. 20: There is good news for all enthusiasts of Bengali language in the steel city.

A Bengali research centre will be coming up in the heart of the city in three months time.

From documenting the different changes in the Bengali dialect to studying the impact of the vernacular language in the state, the centre, which will also have a library, will be instrumental in giving an impetus to boost the stature of the language.

Established a few years ago in Musabani, the centre will be shifted to the steel city. ?Currently, our main focus is to conduct research on the role of Jamshedpur and its people during independence, the Second World War and also how conspicuous the language was in the pre-independence era,? said Bikas Mukherjee, president, Jharkhand Bangabhashi Samannay Samiti.

?The library will be transferred in about three months time but prior to this a team from Jamshedpur will visit Musabani to formulate a plan of action,? said Anand Mitra, a member of the samiti.

The decision was taken at a joint meeting of schoolteachers from the Bengali-medium schools on the first day of the Second Bangabhashi Mahasammelan in the city today.

About 100-odd teachers from various Bengali-medium schools across the state today congregated to discuss the plight of Bengali-medium schools in Jharkhand.

The visiting teachers also prepared a memorandum of demands to improve the state of the language. The list will be handed over to the state government by November 25.

Some of the problems that emerged out of the discussion were lack of proper Bengali textbooks in schools, no recruitment of teachers in Bengali-medium schools irrespective of mass vacancies and transfer of Bengali teachers to Hindi-medium schools.

Lack of Bengali textbooks was another major problem that most teachers highlighted during the meet.

?The board exams are due in a few months, but till date the government has not introduced any Bengali texts. An example of this is a compulsory paper on disaster management called tsunami. Though it is worth 20 marks, the government is yet to come out with a Bengali textbook for this subject,? said Ashish Kumar Roy, secretary of the education cell of the samiti.

?The government had also decided to stop increments in salary and pension for the vernacular medium schoolteachers. This has further worsened the conditions of these schools, so we are going to approach the state government to revive the laws,? said Chandan Chanda, a teacher at Shyamaprasad High School, Jamshedpur.

The list of demands includes clauses such as recruiting Bengali teachers to Bengali-medium schools and re-deputation of teachers from Hindi-medium schools. Other demands include keeping teachers away from duties such as animal census and election duties, all examiners must be Bengali and teachers above 50 years of age should not be transferred from their jobs.

?In 1999, the Bihar government had made it mandatory that Bengali teachers should be appointed within their blocks and in 2002, a new proposal was passed to send back Bengali teachers from Hindi schools. But somehow none of the two have been implemented in Jharkhand, and so we will approach the state government,? added Ghatak.