Guwahati, Nov. 17: A six-member committee, constituted by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), today recommended giving a separate slot to Assamese script in the US-based Unicode Consortium.

The committee was constituted to find a solution to the controversy regarding not allotting a separate slot to Assamese script and identifying it as another form of Bengali script internationally by the Consortium.

The three-hour meeting was held in New Delhi. The development has come as a great relief to the Assamese people who have been fighting for a separate slot for Assamese in the Unicode Consortium.

Dilip Kalita, one of the six members of the committee, told The Telegraph that two possibilities emerged in the meeting. "One possibility was to name the slot after both Assamese and Bengali scripts, which would create problem for both. The other was to give separate slots to both Assamese and Bengali. After discussions, the committee unanimously resolved to recommend allotting separate slots to both the scripts."

Kalita is also the director of North Guwahati-based Anundoram Barooah Institute of Language, Art and Culture (ABILAC).

The recommendation will now be moved to Indian Language Technologies and Products (LITD 20), a section of the BIS, that will take the final call on the country's stand on separate scripts for Assamese. BIS represents the country in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

If LITD 20 accepts the recommendation it will be sent to ISO. And if the latter accepts them (the recommendations), Assamese will get a separate slot in the Unicode Consortium.

The Unicode Consortium, a non-government body with governments of countries as members, have standardised a universal character set - a standard that defines, in one place, all the characters needed for writing the majority of living languages in use on computers.

The next meeting of LITD 20 will be in February next year and that of ISO in October.

Unicode Standard is synchronised with ISO 10646, which is an encoding standard. If ISO accepts LITD's suggestion then it will encode newly for Assamese script and Unicode Consortium will have to accept it by giving a separate slot to Assamese script.

Others who attended today's meeting included Monoj Jain from the ministry of information technology, Sikhar Sarma, Dipti Phukan, Paramananda Rajbongshi, representing the department of information and technology of the Assam government, a professor from IIT Kharagpur representing the government of West Bengal, LITD 20 chairman Rajendra Singh and convener Asish Tiwari and two senior Assam government officials.

Since the process involves many technical aspects, the Assam government will have to prepare a formal proposal and send it to LITD 20, Kalita said.

Those who have been fighting for separate slot for Assamese script met at the office of ABILAC in North Guwahati on November 12 and decided to propose to seek the separate slot for Assamese script.