The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Thursday clarified the decision of including Gujarati as an optional language in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main exam, stating that no state other than Gujarat has approached it to provide paper in any other Indian national language.
The JEE (Main) Examination started in 2013 with the idea of all states admittingtheir engineering candidates through JEE (Main) and the request was sent to all thestates in 2013, the NTA said in a statement.
It said that only Gujarat agreed to admit their candidates in the state engineering colleges of Gujarat through JEE and requested that the paper be made available in the Gujarati language.
In 2014, Maharashtra 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 Marathiand Urdu language was stopped.
"However, the translation of JEE (Main) question paper in the Gujarati language continued on the request of Gujarat state. None of the other States has approached NTA to provide the JEE (Main) question paper in any other Indian National Language," the agency said.
This comes after it was announced that the JEE exam will be conducted in English, Hindi and Gujarati languages by NTA from this year. Following this, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday had questioned the decision of including Gujarati as an optional language in the crucial JEE.
"Our country is India, which is home to so many religions, cultures, languages, creeds and communities. However, maligning all regions and regional languages is the intention of the government at the centre," she had said on Twitter.
She demanded that other regional languages including Bengali should also be included in JEE.
"I love the Gujarati language. But, why have other regional languages been ignored? Why injustice is being meted out to them? If Gujarati has to be there, then all regional languages including Bengali must be there," Banerjee had stated.
( With inputs from ANI )