MUMBAI, March 18 (Xinhua) -- India plans to rope in Bollywood stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif to endorse and promote Urdu language, media reports said Monday.

The National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, now wants to take a more proactive role in promoting Urdu language.

"The council has been tasked with the job of promoting Urdu as a language but all that we have been doing so far is producing literature in the language. We want to now focus more on promoting the language and not just the literature," said ThePrint news report quoting Aquil Ahmed, director of NCPUL.

The government body received a budget of 48.3 million US dollars from the Indian government for 2014-19, almost double of what it received in the preceding five year period when it received 25.6 million US dollars.

However, private players like Rekhta Foundation have popularized the language by organizing events featuring Bollywood celebrities and Urdu is equally popular on social media accounts like twitter where the government body does not even show up in simple twitter search, the report said.

As per 2011 census, Urdu is spoken by 50 million people in India and is the seventh most spoken language in the country.