Karnataka makes Tulu an additional administrative language in two coastal districts

Karnataka’s Cabinet decided on 18 September to make Tulu the state’s second additional administrative language in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi. Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar announced the move after a three-hour meeting at Praja Soudha in Mangaluru, the first Cabinet sitting held outside Bengaluru since he took office.

The status applies to administrative work in those two districts. The district offices will carry it out. The government will spend Rs 82 lakh a year on translation, training and language use. Kannada remains the official language of the state. Tulu becomes a language in which the coastal administration is supposed to work, not a replacement for Kannada across Karnataka.

Tulu is a Dravidian language spoken across the coastal belt known as Tulu Nadu, which covers Dakshina Kannada and Udupi and reaches into Kasaragod in Kerala. It is also spoken in parts of Chikkamagaluru, Shivamogga, Hassan and Kodagu. The 2011 census put Tulu speakers at 49 percent of Dakshina Kannada and about 31 percent of Udupi. The language has its own literature and ritual life. It is not in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. Both Congress and the BJP promised movement on that larger demand during the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign. Friday’s order does not put Tulu in the Eighth Schedule. It changes what a tehsildar’s office in Mangaluru or Udupi is expected to handle.

The committee trail and the political map

A committee led by educationist M. Mohan Alva submitted a report in 2023. Later panels looked at the procedure. Then Kannada and Culture minister V. Sunil Kumar, who represents Karkala in the Tulu heartland, helped set the official study in motion. The demand is old. The instrument is new.

Dakshina Kannada and Udupi together hold 13 Assembly seats. The BJP won 11 of them in 2023. A Congress chief minister granting administrative status in that belt, at a Cabinet meeting staged in Mangaluru, is a direct play for a region his party does not hold. The 2028 state election is the horizon. The Rs 82 lakh line item is the test of whether the status is a circular or a working language. Translation desks, training for clerks and forms that actually appear in Tulu will decide that faster than the press conference.

The other decision taken in the same room

Shivakumar said the Cabinet favoured renaming Dakshina Kannada as Mangaluru district and would seek public objections and suggestions. He argued that the present name does not match how the region is known in the rest of India and abroad. That file will now run through a consultation. It is separate from the language order and will draw its own fight over identity and history.

The same sitting cleared projects worth Rs 32,611 crore, including a Coastal-Malnad tourism policy that treats tourism works as infrastructure, a marine biotechnology policy for 2026-31, a 150-acre fisheries park and Rs 549 crore for a medical college at Puttur. About Rs 16,000 crore of the package is earmarked for rural roads and development.

The language decision is the one that will be quoted in Tulu Nadu. Its value depends on whether a citizen in Udupi can file a paper in Tulu next year and receive an answer in Tulu, or whether the Rs 82 lakh becomes a quiet budget line attached to a speech in Mangaluru.