Dear Team,<br /><br />It is to inform that "Government of Assam" has <u><strong>submitted a proposal at ISO through BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) on 26/02/208 for dis-unification of Assamese script from Bengali Script.</strong></u><br /><br /><strong>1. Background :</strong><br />Government of Assam has submitted the final proposal to Bureau of Indian Standards in February, 2016. Bureau of Indian Standards placed the matter for discussion in its8th Meeting of Indian Language Technologies and Products Sectional Committee, LITD 20, held on 23rd Aug 2017, and decided vide resolution no. 6.1.1, that the proposal of Assam Government to include Assamese script in ISO/IEC 10646 would be referred to ISO.<br /><br />Also, the Chief Minister of Assam in a letter to the Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Govt. of India reiterated Assam Government's demand that " As the ISO 10646 provides a unified character-coding standard for the coding of all characters in all major languages in the world, for the communication and exchange of electronic information, and as the Assamese language with its own Script Assamese is a major Indian language recognized in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, we need that the Script be included with its own range of codes in the ISO standards and also in the Unicode standards, at the earliest."<br />Government of Assam prepared the proposal using the concerned format of ISO , and now submitting the same to ISO through BIS, which includes the details of the background of the proposal, the history and evolution of the script, and the characters and symbol sets.<br /><br /><strong>2. Non-inclusion of Assamese Script in related Standards are of great concern in terms of various parameters <u>as per the proposal</u></strong><ul> <li><em><strong>Loss of identity of the Assamese script: </strong></em>In the present situation, if not rectified by the concerned government agencies, the identity of the Assamese Script in the national and the international standards will gradually completely disappear/vanish. As the future is going to be the complete digital world, the identity of the Assamese script will be at stake in near future.</li> <li><em><strong>Loss of heritage:</strong></em> Assamese script is one of the oldest of Indic Scripts. It is a matter of national importance to preserve this historical and cultural, linguistic heritage. It is to be mentioned that Assamese is an 8thschedule recognized language of India.</li></ul><strong>3. The consequences of splitting the scripts for Neo-Brahmi Generation Panel</strong>
<ul> <li>Every single label of Assamese script would have to be a blocked variant of some label in the "other" script (Bengali). NBGP may wish to consider Assamese Script for further, LGR process/variant analysis as <u><strong>10th Script.</strong></u></li></ul><br /><strong>Thanks,<br />Harish Chowdhary,<br />Technology Analyst,<br />National Internet Exchange of India</strong><br /><span style="color:#0000FF;"><strong>ISOC FELLOW | inSIG FELLOW<br />IIREF FELLOW | UASG AMBASSADOR</strong></span><br /><a href="http://www.nixi.in"><span style="color:#0000FF;">www.nixi.in</span></a><span style="color:#0000FF;"> | </span><a href="http://www.indiaig.in"><span style="color:#0000FF;">www.indiaig.in</span></a><span style="color:#0000FF;"> | </span><a href="http://registry.in"><span style="color:#0000FF;">registry.in</span></a><br><br>
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