Article 345 Lets Each State Choose Its Own Official Language, and the Laws Passed Since 1954 Name Odia in Odisha, Telugu and Urdu in Telangana, and English in Nagaland

Article 345 of the Constitution lets the legislature of each state adopt, by law, “any one or more of the languages in use in the State or Hindi” for its official work. Odisha’s Act of 1954 adopts Odia, Telangana’s amendment of 2017 names Telugu and Urdu, and the Nagaland government’s profile gives its official language as English.

Every one of those choices rests on a state law, so the answer differs from one state to the next. The Union’s own language and the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule are covered in our explainer on the Eighth Schedule and the Union’s official language rules. This article covers the layer below: what the states have adopted, how five of them have written their language into school timetables, and what the three-language formula says in its 1968 and 2020 versions.

What Article 345 lets a state do

Article 345 took effect with most of the Constitution on 26 January 1950, the date Article 394 fixes. The Constituent Assembly adopted the draft without amendment on 14 September 1949, according to the Constitution of India archive. A proviso says that until a state legislature provides otherwise by law, English continues for the official purposes within the state for which it was used before the Constitution began. A state that passes no language law therefore keeps English for those purposes, and a state that passes one decides how far to replace it.

A second article protects children who speak a minority language. Article 350A, added by the Seventh Amendment in 1956, makes it the endeavour of every state and local authority to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage to children of linguistic minority groups. The President may issue directions to any state to secure those facilities.

What each state has chosen

The table below reads each language from the state’s own Act as published in its gazette, or from the state government’s profile page where noted. It covers 16 states and one Union Territory.

Twelve states are missing from the table: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh. Article 345 applies to them equally. They are left out because this article could not read each state’s text in an official copy.

Three patterns show in the rows. Hindi is the principal language in three of the 16 states, and two of those three name a second official language. Of the 16, only Nagaland and Meghalaya adopt English as an official language. Eight of the 16 add a second, associate or additional language: Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Haryana, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Telangana, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

West Bengal’s list shows how far an amendment can stretch. The Act allows Nepali beside Bengali in the hill subdivisions of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong. Amendments in 2018 added Kurukh, Kamtapuri, Rajbanshi and Kurmali, and one in 2021 added Telugu. Each can be used for rules, notifications, petitions and similar documents in districts, subdivisions, blocks or municipalities where its speakers exceed ten per cent of the population, as the state notifies.

Kerala is the newest entry. Its Malayalam Language Act of 2025, published in the gazette as Act 3 of 2026, repealed the Kerala Official Languages Act of 1969, which had adopted Malayalam and English. The new Act names Malayalam for all official purposes and keeps English for letters to the Union, other states, the High Court and the Supreme Court.

How state language laws reach the classroom

Education is entry 25 of the Concurrent List, the Seventh Schedule list on which both Parliament and the states can legislate, as the explainer on the three lists sets out. Karnataka’s 2015 Act cites that entry. Five states have used it to make their own language a school subject by statute.

• Tamil Nadu, Act 13 of 2006 (assent 9 June 2006): Tamil is taught as a subject in standards I to X in all schools, starting with standard I in 2006 to 2007. The Act’s pattern makes English compulsory too. A student whose mother tongue is neither can study it as an optional subject, and the Act’s definition of a school covers minority schools under Article 30(1).
• Karnataka, Act 22 of 2015 (assent 29 April 2015): Kannada is taught as a compulsory language, first or second, in all classes of all schools, phased in from standard I in 2015 to 2016. A student whose mother tongue is another language may study it as a third language.
• Maharashtra, Act 3 of 2020 (9 March 2020): Marathi is a compulsory subject from standard I to X in every school in the state. The phase-in began with standards I and VI in 2020 to 2021 and ended with V and X in 2024 to 2025. A school that breaks the Act can be fined up to Rs 1 lakh (Rs 100,000).
• Gujarat, Act 4 of 2023 (assent 2 March 2023): Gujarati is taught as one of the languages in schools giving elementary education, which the Act defines as classes I to VIII, phased in from 2023 to 2024.
• Kerala, Act 3 of 2026: Malayalam is the compulsory first language in all government and aided schools up to standard X. A student whose mother tongue is another language studies Malayalam in addition. The Act also lets the Tamil and Kannada linguistic minorities write to the state government in their own languages in areas the government notifies.

The courts have drawn a line at a different question, the medium in which a school teaches. A Karnataka order of 29 April 1994 required classes 1 to 4 to be taught in the mother tongue or Kannada. The Supreme Court decided the challenge on 6 May 2014. Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression project, summarising the judgment, says the Court read “mother tongue” in Article 350A as the inherited language that a parent or guardian names, held that the order violated the freedom to choose the medium, and kept the right of minority schools and private unaided schools to choose theirs. The Acts above speak of teaching a language, not of the medium.

The three-language formula in two documents

The Official Language Resolution of 1968, adopted by both Houses of Parliament, resolved that arrangements should be made for the study of a modern Indian language, preferably one of the southern languages, besides Hindi and English in Hindi-speaking areas. In non-Hindi-speaking areas it called for Hindi along with the regional language and English.

The National Education Policy 2020 keeps the name and changes the terms. Paragraph 4.13 says the formula will continue to be implemented with regard to constitutional provisions, the aspirations of the people, the regions and the Union, and the need for multilingualism and national unity. It adds that there will be greater flexibility and that “no language will be imposed on any State”. The three languages are the choice of the states, the regions and the students, so long as at least two are native to India. A student may change one or more of them in Grade 6 or 7, if able to show by the end of secondary school basic proficiency in three languages, one of them an Indian language at the literature level.

The two texts differ in what they name. The 1968 resolution fixes Hindi and English as parts of the formula. The 2020 policy requires no particular language. It sets only the requirement of two Indian ones, and paragraph 4.17 lists Sanskrit as an option within the formula.

On the medium of instruction, paragraph 4.11 says it will be the home language, mother tongue, local language or regional language wherever possible, until at least Grade 5 and preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, in public and private schools alike.

Tamil Nadu: two languages since 1968

On 23 January 1968 the Madras Assembly took up a proposal from the Chief Minister, C. N. Annadurai, and after a three-day debate adopted a resolution scrapping the three-language formula, Deccan Herald reports. Tamil and English have been the state’s school languages since. The state’s 2006 Act made Tamil a subject in every school, and the State Education Policy that the Chief Minister released on 8 August 2025 repeated the two-language policy, The News Minute reported.

The Tamil Nadu government’s stated objection, as Deccan Herald summarises it, is that the three-language norm could bring Hindi into schools indirectly. The policy text itself says no language will be imposed on any state. A funding question sits beside the language one. Deccan Herald reports that on 15 February 2025 the Union Education Minister said states that did not implement NEP 2020 would not receive money under the Samagra Shiksha scheme, and calls that statement the root of the renewed debate.

Maharashtra: a third language ordered and withdrawn in 2025

Maharashtra’s law makes Marathi the official language and a compulsory school subject. In 2025 the question was a third language. A government resolution of 16 April 2025 made Hindi the compulsory third language in classes 1 to 5 of English and Marathi medium schools, The Week reported. An amended order in June made Hindi optional. On 29 June 2025 the state cabinet withdrew both orders, after several opposition parties had called the order an imposition of Hindi.

The Chief Minister announced a committee headed by the educationist Narendra Jadhav to recommend how the three-language policy should be implemented. All India Radio News reported on 9 February 2026 that the committee had handed in its report. The Chief Minister said it would go to the state cabinet, which would decide which recommendations to accept or modify, and he did not disclose its contents.