Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rup on Thursday slammed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for questioning the decision to include Gujarati as an optional language in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) main paper.
"Dear Divider Didi, people of your state need development, not such divisive stunts. Now that the facts are out, you should apologies to the people for your lies!" Vijay Rup stated in a tweet.
Earlier today, Banerjee took to the Twitter to question why the examination was only conducted in Hindi, English and Gujarati language and not in other languages. She also sought the inclusion of Bengali as an optional language in the examination.
"Our country is India, which is home to so many religions, cultures, languages, creeds, and communities. Joint Entrance Exams so long were conducted in English and Hindi languages. Surprisingly, now only the Gujarati language has been added. Such a step is not at all praiseworthy," she stated.
To her contentions, National Testing Agency (NTA) issued a statement clarifying the grounds for conducting the exam in Gujarati, Hindi, and English across the country.
The agency said that no state other than Gujarat has approached it to provide paper in any other Indian national language.
In 2014, Maharashtra had also opted for admitting the engineering candidates in the state engineering colleges through JEE and requested to provide the question paper in the language of Marathi and Urdu. Later in 2016, both these states withdrew the admission to the state engineering colleges through JEE (Main). Therefore, the translation in Marathi and Urdu language was stopped.
( With inputs from ANI )