A national-level autonomous body tasked with promoting the Urdu language and literature has been unable to hold the World Urdu Conference or fund research and seminars for at least two years, with its officials accusing the central government of obstructiveness.

The education ministry has sat on successive proposals from the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) to hold the world conference, according to two NCPUL officials who declined to be identified.

They added that the ministry had also blocked many of the council’s other key functions by refusing sanction.

These include providing grants to educational institutions and NGOs to hold seminars and conferences on the Urdu language and literature, buying books by Urdu writers and distributing them among libraries and other institutions, providing research grants to Urdu scholars, and setting up new training centres in the Urdu, Arabic and Persian languages.

Further, the ministry has failed to nominate members to the NCPUL’s general council and executive committee, leaving them with just 4 members each instead of the stipulated 37 and 9, respectively, the officials said.

The council had held the World Urdu Conference every year from 2014 till 2019. Since international experts are invited, the event needs approval from the education and external affairs ministries.

When the NCPUL proposed to hold the event in February 2020, the education ministry asked that it be put on hold, the two council officials said. They added that ministry officials had informally expressed fear of protests or sloganeering by some of the Indian participants against the CAA and the NRC update.

In 2020 and 2021, amid the pandemic, the council eventually held two webinars on the Urdu language that were passed off as the World Urdu Conference.

In 2022 and 2023, the council proposed full-fledged, in-person World Urdu Conferences but the education ministry did not respond, and not even any online events could be organised, the two NCPUL officials said.

Since the NCPUL remains virtually defunct with most of the member posts for independent Urdu scholars vacant, the conduct of the world conference has entered a phase of uncertainty.

As for funding seminars, research and book-buying, the executive committee has to approve the proposals. Currently, the nine-member committee has been reduced to four members, three of whom are government representatives: the education minister, who heads the panel, and two joint secretaries from the education ministry. The fourth member is the NCPUL director.

The other five members are to be selected from the general council of 37 members.

However, the general council itself has no members apart from these four because the tenures of the rest of the members – all government-nominated — expired in 2021. The government has not reconstituted the general council.

The two NCPUL officials said even four members do make the quorum in the executive committee.

"But while the NCPUL has sent a proposal to the ministry to approve the release of funds for its promotional activities (such as funding research and conferences, and book buying), the ministry has not replied," one of the officials said.

An email was sent over two months ago to higher education secretary Sanjay Murthy seeking his comments on the allegations of neglect of the NCPUL. His response is awaited.