Pariksha SaathiMinistry of Tribal Affairs holds first meeting of Working Group on Tribal Languages; Adi Vaani to become national tribal language repository
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs held the first meeting of its Working Group on Tribal Languages on 15 October 2026 in hybrid mode, chaired by Secretary Ranjana Chopra, with linguists and institutions including the Central Institute of Indian Languages, IITs Delhi, Dharwad and Kanpur, Tezpur, Manipur, Assam and Sikkim universities, the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the Bhasha Samiti. The group is to guide the documentation, digital preservation, research and promotion of tribal languages, with a proposed framework covering a national baseline of tribal languages, language technology, community-led documentation of oral traditions and multilingual education. Adi Vaani, the AI translation platform developed by IIT Delhi with the ministry, is being positioned as the National Tribal Language Repository: it offers text translation in nine tribal languages plus speech, OCR and video subtitling, gives access to more than 300 primers prepared by Tribal Research Institutes, holds about 13.9 lakh sentences in ten languages and about 300 hours of speech data, and has recorded over 48,000 Android downloads and about 6,500 monthly users. Bhasha Samiti chairman Chamu Krishna Shastry set out seven pillars for developing any Indian language, and former Sahitya Akademi secretary K. Sreenivasa Rao presented a two-year documentation and revitalisation plan.
Drafted with AI assistance from the official PIB release linked above and checked against it by a second AI pass. Not line-edited by a human.
Learning context
The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution lists 22 languages; Santhali and Bodo, both tribal languages, were added by the 92nd Amendment in 2003 along with Dogri and Maithili. Article 29 protects the right of any section of citizens to conserve its distinct language, script or culture, and Article 350A asks states to provide primary education in the mother tongue for linguistic minorities. The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru, was set up in 1969 under the Ministry of Education.
Reference: Ministry of Home Affairs list of the Eighth Schedule languages
Check yourself: are all tribal languages of India in the Eighth Schedule?
No. Only a few, such as Santhali and Bodo (added in 2003), are among the 22 scheduled languages; most tribal languages are outside the Schedule, which is why documentation efforts like this working group matter.
Revision task: from this release, note what Adi Vaani does and its figures (nine languages, 300-plus primers, about 13.9 lakh sentences), and keep them apart from the standing facts about the Eighth Schedule above.
Test yourself
Adi Vaani, positioned as the National Tribal Language Repository at the 15 October 2026 meeting, was developed by which institution together with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs?
Show the answer
Answer: IIT Delhi
Adi Vaani was developed by IIT Delhi in collaboration with the ministry; it translates text in nine tribal languages and also offers speech, OCR and video subtitling.
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