Imphal, May 20: The Meitei Erol Eyek Loinasillon Apunba Lup, spearheading the script movement in Manipur, has expressed its satisfaction with the May 14 cabinet decision to replace the Bengali script with Meitei Mayek but will call off its agitation only if all the volunteers are released from prison unconditionally.

?We will call off the agitation only after all the script volunteers, now in Sajiwa jail, are released without any conditions,? said S. Jugeswar Meitei, publicity secretary of the script organisation.

Nearly 400 script volunteers, including Chingsubam Akaba, president of the organisation, and several leaders of the Democratic Students Alliance of Manipur were rounded up and jailed for taking part in the violent campaign. The script backers burnt lakhs of school textbooks, the state?s oldest central library and Imphal?s railway reservation counter.

Akaba and several others were booked under the National Security Act. However, their detention under the act is yet to be confirmed by the state NSA detention board.

The Meitei Erol Eyek Loinasillon Apunba Lup?s announcement came after a delegation of the organisation had a long discussion with chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh about the cabinet decision and also the government?s commitment to introduce the script. The cabinet had resolved to replace the Bengali script with Meitei Mayek from Classes I and II from the next academic session. The cabinet suggested that the Roman script be used for students of non-Meitei communities.

Ibobi Singh reportedly assured the delegation that the government was prepared to introduce the script upto the university level as a non-credit course (marks will not be included in the aggregate) to popularise the script from the next academic session.

Other assurances given by the chief minister include amendment of the Manipur Official Language Act and release of the script backers from jail. The government has also constituted a committee to scrutinise the book transcription. The members are former additional school education director W. Tomchou, professors Kangjiya Mangang, S. Ning-omba and script-switch advocates Akaba and Kh. Basanta.