Bhubaneswar/New Delhi, May 30: Linguists and Odia researchers have taken exception to the Odia language not being on the list of regional languages through which the Prime Minister's Office website can be accessed.

The multilingual website was launched yesterday by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, who described it as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's effort to reach out to people and communicate with them in their own language.

The list includes Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu in addition to English and Hindi.

Eminent linguist Debiprasanna Pattanayak termed the development as "shameful".

"It seems that our language is still neither recognisable nor considered popular enough. It is very disgraceful for Odisha," said Pattanayak, who had led the team that had compiled the documents submitted by the Odisha government to the Centre, following which Odia got the classical language tag. Pattanayak said literary organisations from the state had already written to Odia politicians at the Centre to facilitate the inclusion of the language in the next round.

Researchers also said the language had not been included on the website because of lack of promotion by the state government.

"It has been two years since we got the classical tag but the state government is yet to do its bit for popularisation of the language. We still do not have a centre of excellence in Odia nor have bodies like Odia Bhasa Pratisthan set up for the conservation of the language been made functional," said Subhashish Panigrahi, an active contributor to Odia Wikipedia.

Secretary of the Institute of Odia Studies and Research Subrat Prusty said: "We are yet to carry out official work in Odia and the websites of the state government departments are still not accessible in our native language. Until the official website of chief minister's office is available in Odia, there is no point blaming the Centre for ignoring our language.

However, external affairs minister Swaraj said: "Other regional language versions of the website will be available in a phased manner."

"Odia is one of the three languages that could be picked for expanding the linguistic spread of the official website of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in the next round, the other two being Kannada and Punjabi," an official said.

However, there is no time frame for this because the priority is to ensure the sustainability of the multilingual website. The target is to make the website available in all the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.

Officials privy to the whole exercise said the choice of languages to go multi-lingual hinges on expertise in regional offices of the Press Information Bureau.

"The PMO website is very dynamic and we need to see how it works in the first phase. It is not just about translating the information at almost real time but also verifying the translation and uploading additional content," said the official.

As of now, Odia, Kannada and Punjabi are the languages with the next level of competence to be roped in, said an official but added that the next three months would be focused on ensuring the smooth running of what was currently operational.