The Janata Dal (United) on Monday demanded classical language status for Maithili, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in parts of Bihar, Jharkhand and Nepal.

The party, led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, is an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party and is part of the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre.

The demand came after the Union government on October 3 granted classical language status to Marathi, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit and Assamese.

Sanjay Kumar Jha, the national working president of Janata Dal (United), said he would soon meet with Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan to seek classical language status for Maithili.

Maithili is the only Bihari language with its own script, called Tirhuta.

“Conservation and promotion of the Maithili language have been my top priority right from the beginning,” Jha said on Monday. “I had prepared the basis for the inclusion of Maithili in the category of classical language in 2018.”

For a language to be included in the category, it needs to meet a criterion that includes high antiquity of its early texts or recorded history over 1,500 years to 2,000 years, a body of texts written in the language that is considered “valuable heritage” and the originality of its literary tradition.

The Janata Dal (United) leader said that a committee of scholars had recommended the inclusion of Maithili in the classical language category in a report to the Centre on August 31, 2018.

“The first recommendation was that the Maithili language is about 1,300 years old, and its literature has developed independently and continuously,” Jha said. “Therefore, it should be placed in the category of classical language. But it has not been able to get such a status.”

Jha added that Kumar had initiated the effort. He also said that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had ensured the inclusion of Maithili in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, meeting a long-standing demand of the residents of the Mithila region.

The Eighth Schedule lists the languages that have official status in the country.

In 2004, the Centre created the new category of “classical languages”. Tamil was the first to be given the title.

Other languages have since been added to the list, such as Sanskrit in 2005, Telugu and Kannada in 2008, Malayalam in 2013 and Odia in 2014.

Jha expressed confidence that the Union government would agree to his party’s demand. He said he had “no doubt that the NDA governments, both in Bihar state and at the Centre, have done all works for the preservation and promotion” of the Maithili language.