A government agency set up to promote Urdu has postponed its annual world conference for the first time under pressure from the central government over fears that some participants may protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

The National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), which had invited about 100 Urdu academics and writers, including 25 from over 15 foreign countries, this week wrote to all of them stating that the conference has been put off.

“A three-day World Urdu Conference on ‘Linguistic and Literary Relations of Urdu with Indian & Foreign Languages/Literatures’ slated from 26th February to 28th February, 2020, at New Delhi has been postponed due to unavoidable reasons and a fresh date will be communicated to you later on. The inconvenience caused is regrettable. Hope that you will attend on the new dates,” said a communication sent by NCPUL director Aquil Ahmad to the invitees.

Multiple invitees told The Telegraph they had learnt that the human resource development ministry had “informally” asked the council to postpone the event because of the possibility of a protest or sloganeering by some of the participants over the new citizenship matrix.

“What I heard is that the government informally asked the NCPUL to cancel or postpone the conference because of fear about anti-CAA voices at the event. The NCPUL agreed,” said an invitee, who is an author.

“The government’s pressure on the NCPUL to cancel or defer the event on Urdu means interference in the internal affairs of the council. The NCPUL is an autonomous body,” he added.

The NCPUL director, however, ruled out any pressure from the government. Ahmad said he had requested the government to allow postponement of the event because many international guests could not get visas. He cited concern among the guests over the coronavirus as another reason.

“Many invitees told me that they should be invited six months in advance so that they get their visas and schedule their visit properly. Many expressed apprehensions about the coronavirus. I requested the government to postpone and the government agreed,” Ahmad said.

“It is an international event. The CAA is a domestic issue. There is no reason to think that the CAA would be raised there,” he added.

The HRD ministry had not responded till Thursday evening to an email from this newspaper seeking comment.

The Urdu conference has been put off at a time several institutions, such as IIT Bombay, have reminded students and teachers that participation in protests against government policies might run counter to the code of conduct.

The World Urdu Conference was launched by the NCPUL in 2014 to promote the language. In the first two years, the NCPUL had published as a book the papers presented at the conference.

The author-invitee said the NCPUL had stopped publishing the papers in a book form for the last four years. Several well-known Urdu scholars have not been invited too, he said.

Ahmad said he took charge as director last year. The papers presented last year would be published in a book form soon, he said.

The NCPUL director did not wish to comment about the previous three years. On the charge of scholars being ignored, Ahmad said the invitees were chosen keeping in view the topic of the conference.

Urdu fiction writer and Sahitya Akademi award-winner Rahman Abbas disapproved of the decision by the NCPUL to postpone the conference.

“Postponing or cancelling a conference is not going to solve the problem. People are agitated because the CAA is clashing with constitutional values. How many events will the government cancel?” Abbas asked.

Urdu poet Sehnaz Nabi said that despite organising conferences and seminars, the government cannot repair the damage to its reputation. The status of Urdu as the official language of Jammu and Kashmir is under threat after the state became a Union Territory, she added.

“The BJP government is damaging the language and culture of India. Some annual conference on Urdu will not help repair its reputation,” Nabi said.