The deputy secretary for education, Svetlana Vujovic, told Hina on Tuesday that the decision had been suspended and would not be implemented until the Department for Education received an opinion from the academies of arts and sciences of Vojvodina and Serbia on the possibility of standardising the language.
The proposal for the introduction of the language of the Bunjevci was put forward by the National Council of the Bunjevci minority, which denies the Croatian origin of this ethnic group.
Unofficial sources said that the approval for the introduction of the language had been withdrawn following an intervention by institutions representing the Croatian minority in Serbia, primarily the Democratic League of Croats in Vojvodina.
Representatives of the Croatian community in Serbia have said that the Bunjevci language is a dialect spoken by Croats in the Backa region and that it cannot be declared a separate language of a separate ethnic group.
Last week, prominent Bunjevci Croats, who live in Serbia, Croatia and Hungary, asked the governments of Croatia and Serbia to put a stop to the processes of artificial division of the Croatian community in Vojvodina into Croats and Bunjevci.