For the 2021-22 academic year, top engineering institutes, including IITs and NITs, will offer their engineering courses in their respective regional languages. The decision was reached during a high level meeting chaired by Minister of Education, Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal.
“A seminal decision was made to start technical education, especially engineering courses imparting education in mother tongue will be opened from next academic year. A few IIT and NIT are being shortlisted for the same,” an official statement by the ministry stated.
This is in line with the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which promotes regional language as a mode of delivering education. There have been demands of holding the entrance exams, including JEE, NEET, CAT, etc., in regional languages as well.
In November 2019, the Ministry of Education (then Human Resource Development Ministry) had announced that starting 2021, JEE Main aspirants would be able to write the entrance test in 11 languages, including Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odiya, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
According to data released by the National Testing Agency, over 79 percent of NEET applications come for English, and English and Hindi combined make for 91.88 percent of candidates. In 2019, English only made of 79.31 percent while in 2020 it was 79.08.
The Joint Admission Board on 22 October also announced that it conducted the high-stake engineering entrance exam in more regional languages, Union Minister of Education Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal said on Thursday, 22 October.
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