“Aadhaar” is Oxford Dictionaries’ Hindi word of 2017. Its decision was announced at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Saturday.

“The controversy surrounding ‘Aadhaar’ made it the word on everyone’s lips in 2017, but it is not the only one,” Oxford Dictionaries said. “Several other words made the Word of the Year shortlist, each having become part of the Indian collective consciousness in the past twelve months.”

Other words such as “mitron”, “notebandi” and “gau rakshak” were also considered, journalist Saurabh Dwivedi said during a panel discussion at the literary festival, NDTV reported. In the end, Aadhaar was chosen because of the widespread discussions on it.

The Supreme Court is hearing petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Indian goverenment’s Aadhaar programme.

Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi, writer-director Pankaj Dubey, filmmaker Anu Singh Choudhary and leading literary figure Chitra Mudgal also participated in the discussion, The Times of India reported.

When Dubey called for new words such as “sleepawastha” (state of sleeping) and “maukatarian” (opportunist) to be coined to express certain moods, Mudgal objected and said that languages should be used correctly. “If a person with lack of proper knowledge coins and expresses such words then it can be understood, but this is not acceptable when educated people do this,” Mudgal argued.

Vajpeyi reasoned that the responsibility to conserve language lies with the people. “Changes would come, new words would be coined, but ultimately, the responsibility to conserve the language is on citizens,” he said.