The Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Bill, 2020 was a legislative proposal introduced in the Parliament of India, which subsequently became the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Act, 2020 after receiving Presidential Assent on September 26, 2020. This Act is a piece of central legislation that provides for the languages to be used for the official purposes of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Act's origin is directly connected to the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which bifurcated the former state into two Union Territories. Before this, the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir had only Urdu and English as its official languages. The 2020 Act was created to solve the problem of linguistic exclusion by recognizing languages spoken by a majority of the population, fulfilling a long-standing public demand.
The key mechanism of the Act is laid out in Section 3, which declares five languages as the official languages of the Union Territory: Kashmiri, Dogri, Urdu, Hindi, and English. This provision added Kashmiri, Dogri, and Hindi to the existing official languages of Urdu and English. The Act specifies that English may continue to be used for the administrative and legislative purposes for which it was used before the Act's commencement. Furthermore, Section 4 empowers the Administrator (Lieutenant Governor) to take steps for the promotion and development of regional languages, with a specific mention of making special efforts for Gojri, Pahari, and Punjabi languages. The Act connects to the constitutional provisions in Part XVII (Articles 343 to 351) concerning official languages, and the inclusion of Dogri and Kashmiri relates to the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, which lists recognized languages. The Act replaced the previous linguistic framework where only Urdu and English held official status.