Mangalore : Eric Ozario, Mandd Sobhann Gurkar speaking at the press meet held at Press Club on June 30, Saturday said that the Global Konkani Organization has filed a petition to High Court against the Sahithya Academy in New Delhi, urging recognition for five scripts, including Devanagari, to consider for Konkani awards, projects, and assignments.

He said that the Central Sahithya Academy has only considered Konkani books in Devanagari script for awards. Hence the petition urges court that Konkani books written in Perso-Arabic, Roman, Kannada, and Malayalam scripts should also be considered for awards.

Devanagari script is considered as the official script even it is after the script like Roman and Kannada. The Academy has been presenting awards, projects, and assignments only to Konkani in Devanagari script from the beginning, but no positive response has been gained even after appealing for number of times. Hence Marcel D’Souza, Valli Vagga, and Eric Ozario have urged the high court to get recognition for all the five scripts used in writing Konkani, he said.

Apart from it, the Karnataka State Konkani Linguistic Minorities Institutions has filed the court only to consider Devanagari script for Konkani.

In this regard, institution had given a false press statement on June 12 stating that the Constitution has given importance only to Devanagari script and the recognition of other scripts will destroy the importance of Devanagari script.

JKS treasurer Roy Castelino, K. K. Utharan Vice President, Dr. Prathapnanda Nail and Valli Vagga, writer were also present.