Agartala: The Sahitya Akademi has undertaken an ambitious programme to provide allout support to uplift 20 languages of ethnic minorities in the northeastern India, a top Akademi official said here on Wednesday.

"We have enlisted 20 languages of ethnic minorities in the region. The literary works in the these languages would be translated into other Indian languages," said Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay, regional secretary of the Sahitya Akademi. Other support would also be given to these languages for their development, he added.

While speaking at the northeast literary festival here, he said: "The Sahitya Akademi, during the past one year, has organised 30 programmes across the country, where writers and poets from the northeastern states presented their literary works and earned huge appreciation." In line with such programmes, literary and scholarly events are being held in the interior parts of the region, Mukhopadhyay said.

He described India's northeastern region, where around 200 ethnic groups have contributed to create a strong tradition of social, cultural and literary identity, as a 'literary store-house of India.'

Mukhopadhyay said the Akademi would also make allout efforts to give exposure to the writers and poets of the region.

Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar inaugurated the three-day festival, in which writers and poets from all the eight northeastern states are participating.

In his speech, renowned fiction writer Lakshmi Nandan Bora said: "Without the development of the literary works in the northeastern region, the Indian literature cannot be developed."

Bora, who is also the convenor of the eastern regional board of the Sahitya Akademi, said, "There is huge scope to develop the literary works of small ethnic groups of the region as their culture, language and tradition are different." The crises that the region faces could also contribute to develop the literary works, Bora added.

The theme of the three-day festival is 'many voices'. Seminars and discussions on topics including literature and folk culture would be held during the festival, which is fourth of its kind in the region. IANS