Central Institute of Indian Languages is a subordinate office of the Department of Education, Ministry of Education, Government of India. It advises and Assists Central as well as State Governments in the matters of language, contributes to the development of all Indian Languages by creating content and corpus, protects and Documents Minor, Minority and Tribal Languages and promotes Linguistic harmony by teaching 20 Indian languages to non-native learners. The institute also promotes the three language formula policy of the Government of India by way of teaching and providing training in 20 scheduled languages of India via its seven Regional Centres across India, namely at Mysore, Bhubaneswar, Patiala, Pune, Lucknow, Solan and Guwahati.

The Institute runs several schemes and projects catering to various needs towards the promotion of Indian languages. Some of its major schemes are National Translation Mission (NTM), National Testing Services - India (NTS-I), Linguistic Data Consortium of Indian Languages (LDC-IL), centres for the four Classical Languages namely Kannada, Telugu, Odia and Malayalam, and the Grants in-Aid. It also has internal major projects like Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages (SPPEL) and Bharatavani.