West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wants Bengali to be included in the Joint Entrance Exam regional language options.
Recently she had asked why the local language was not included and accused the central government of “maligning all regions and regional languages” in a series of tweets. She had also said that if the issue was not sorted “gracefully” people would be deeply hurt and “there will be strong protests.
“Joint Entrance Exams so long were conducted in English and Hindi languages. Surprisingly, now only Gujarati language has been added,” she wrote, calling such a step “not at all praiseworthy.
“I love Gujarati language. But, why have other regional languages been ignored? Why injustice is being meted out to them?” she asked.
A day later, the National Testing Agency (NTA) has a response. The organisation clarified in a press release that when the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main was started in 2013 all states were sent a request for them to admit Engineering candidates through JEE. However, only Gujarat responded with an affirmative and requested that the paper be made available in their regional language. Similarly, Maharashtra followed suit in 2014, requesting question papers in Marathi and Urdu.
“In 2016,” writes the NTA both these States withdrew the admission to State Engineering colleges through JEE. But the Gujarati translation of the paper remained at the request of the state.
“None of the other States have approached NTA to provide the JEE (Main) question paper in any other Indian National Language,” concluded the NTA.
Banerjee responded further by saying that didn’t have any problem with the JEE, being conducted in the Gujarati language.
“Our Education Minister had also written to National Testing Agency (NTA) on this issue to conduct the test in Bengali,” she said according to an ANI report.
