Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will hold discussions with the Public Service Commission (PSC) on Monday on the demand for making PSC question papers available in Malayalam as well, as he promised at the September 7 meeting.
The meeting was delayed following consecutive holidays for festivals including Onam and Muharram while Aikya Malayala Prasthanam is on an indefinite fast before the PSC head office here from August 30.
On the Thiruvonam day, writers and intellectuals staged a statewide fast in solidarity. They said they would intensify protests if Monday’s talks failed.
They have the support of ace filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, poets Sugadha Kumari and V Madhusudanan Nair and former chief minister Oommen Chandy.
They accuse the PSC of neglecting Malayalam even after it became the state’s administrative language in 2017.
They asked the PSC to conduct all its tests in Malayalam as well as English. Although PSC exams that required a basic qualification above Class X featured questions in Malayalam for 10 marks, the candidates cannot take it in their mother tongue.
When the Prasthanam raised the issue, the PSC said translating questions into Malayalam would risk leakage.
As per the Prasthanam, Malayalam is the mother tongue of 97.02 per cent of the people in the state, while 98.98 per cent were capable of speaking as per Census 2011 data.
Malayalam had also been given the classical status, it pointed out.
