The Odisha government has directed all district administrations to immediately enforce the revised English spellings of districts, sub-divisions, tahasils, blocks and urban local bodies across every sphere of official work, accelerating the implementation of a linguistic reform aimed at aligning administrative names with authentic Odia pronunciation. In a communication issued by the Revenue and Disaster Management Department, all District Magistrates have been instructed to ensure that the corrected spellings are adopted without delay in official records, government correspondence, signboards, nameplates, websites, portals, databases and every other form of official communication. Additional Chief Secretary Arabinda Kumar Padhee asked the districts to strictly comply with the revised nomenclature and submit an Action Taken Report (ATR) after completing the exercise. The latest directive follows the state government’s notification issued on June 22, under which the English spellings of districts, sub-divisions, tahasils, blocks and urban local bodies were standardised in line with Odia phonetics. The notification clarified that the exercise is limited to correcting English spellings and does not alter the official names of any administrative unit. The revised spellings came into effect from the date of their publication in the Odisha Gazette. The initiative is intended to preserve Odisha’s linguistic and cultural identity by replacing English spellings that do not accurately reflect the pronunciation of the original Odia names. The government has maintained that the changes are purely transliteration corrections designed to restore authenticity while ensuring uniformity in official usage. District authorities have been asked to ensure that every government office and institution under their jurisdiction adopts the revised spellings consistently across physical and digital platforms. The implementation also covers records maintained by local bodies and other public authorities to eliminate inconsistencies in official documentation.
Odisha Government Directs Immediate Adoption of Corrected English Spellings Across Administrative Units
