Darjeeling, Sept. 29: The All Gorkha Students’ Union has demanded that cellular service providers in Sikkim and the area that the hills have been demanding as Gorkhaland should give their tariff-related information in the Nepali language.

At present, cellular operators in north Bengal and Sikkim provide such information in English, Hindi and Bengali.

“Nepali is a language that has been recognised under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. We therefore demand that the information should also be provided in Nepali apart from the other languages,” said Hemant Rai, the general secretary of the union.

The demand of the apolitical students’ body has been spurred by a recent policy formulated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). Rai claimed that the Trai had issued a directive earlier this month encouraging such a move.

Referring to media reports that quoted the directive, Rai said: “The Trai has asked the operators to make the tariff-related information available in regional languages apart from English. The policy has been taken to ensure that the interest of the customers are taken into account,” the student leader added.

He said the union would write to all service providers operating in the region to start providing information in Nepali as soon as possible.

The representatives of the service providers could not be contacted for immediate comment.

The student body has raised the demand at a time when there is a general feeling among the literary circles in the hills that the use of the Nepali language has not been effectively implemented despite its recognition by the Constitution in 1992.

The Nepali language had been included in the Eighth Schedule after a struggle of almost four decades beginning in the late 60s. The agitation, commonly known as “bhasha andolan”, was one of the major issues in the hills before it was overshadowed by the demand for Gorkhaland that first made an appearance in the early eighties.

The language issue had once again surfaced in the hills after the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council was formed in 1988. Apart from the people of the hills, the residents of Sikkim had also rallied for the recognition of the language with the then MP from the Himalayan state, Dil Kumari Bhandari, taking the lead role.