As per India Census 2011, which of the 22 languages specified in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India is spoken by least number of people?

Option 3 : Sanskrit

The correct answer is Sanskrit.

• In all, 13 of the 22 scheduled languages had at least 1% of the population reporting them as their mother tongue.
• Except for Sanskrit, each of the 21 listed languages has at least 10 lakh people reporting it as their mother tongue.
• Sanskrit is the only language spoken by a population of approximately 25000 people.
• According to the 2011 census, Hindi is the mother tongue of 43.63 percent of Indians.

• Sanskrit is a South Asian classical language that is part of the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European languages.
• It emerged in South Asia in the Late Bronze Age, after its ancestor languages had spread there from the northwest. 
• Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithili, and Dogri are among the 22 languages listed in the Constitution's Eighth Schedule.