The Uttar Pradesh government, led by Yogi Adityanath, has suspended Dr Tabassum Khan, Joint Director (Health), for a September 1 decision mandating all district health centres and government hospitals to display all signboards and nameplates in Urdu.
According to reports, Dr Khan took the arbitrary decision to include instructions on signboards and nameplates in Urdu along with Hindi without taking government approval for the same.
Owing to this, the government of Uttar Pradesh suspended Dr Tabassum Khan for dereliction of duty. Raja Ganpati R, director (administration) of the health department confirmed the same to the media.
“The procedure for issuing the government order was not followed by her. The order directing CMOs to ensure that signboards and nameplates at government hospitals were written in Urdu was also issued by her without informing senior officers,” he said.
The government stated that Dr Khan was prima facie guilty of “severe indiscipline” for issuing the directive on her own without receiving approval from the right authority.
Tabassum took this decision on September 1, 2022, in response to a complaint from Mohammad Harun, a citizen of Unnao, who asked why, after Urdu was designated as the state’s second official language in October 1989, the names of hospitals and authorities were not written in Urdu along with Hindi.
Notably, Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav was chief minister when Urdu was accorded the status of the second language of Uttar Pradesh.