The Government has been actively taking necessary measures for introduction of Hindi as an official language of the United Nations. In 2003, a high level committee was constituted under the chairmanship of External Affairs Minister to look into this matter and it was decided to prepare an Advocacy Paper to present the case. A formal proposal is, however, yet to be made to the United Nations as this has financial, procedural as well as legal implications. Procedurally, this would involve obtaining approval of the General Assembly to amend the rule specifying the official and working languages which would require approval of the majority (at least 97 countries) in the General Assembly. As the proposing country, India would need to provide sufficient financial resources to cover the cost of interpretation, translation, printing and duplication of all documents which could cost in excess of US $ 14 million per year at a very conservative estimate. In addition, since recognizing any language as the official language of the UN also entails a significant increase in the expenditure of the UN necessitating an enhanced contribution by every member country, most of the members remain reluctant to support such a proposal.
A World Hindi Secretariat has been set up in Mauritius with effect from 11th February 2008 to promote Hindi as an international language and to institutionalize the organization of World Hindi Conference. The Secretariat has a Governing Council, and an Executive Board and is headed by a Secretary General.
This information was given by Shri S.M.Krishna, Union Minister of External Affairs in reply to a question in Lok Sabha