Bhubaneswar: The State Government has proposed to include 16 additional tribal languages in multilingual education (MLE). Attending a three-day national seminar on Multilingual Education that began here on Saturday, Director of Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) Deoranjan Kumar Singh said that keeping in view the growing demands from communities for MLE, these additional tribal languages would be encouraged in primary education.

A decision has been taken to declare the District Institutes of Education and Training (DIET) in Jeypore, Baripada and Sambalpur as regional resource centres for tribal education. After this introduction, the total number of tribal languages selected for MLE based on educational need would reach 26.