Delhi University students mull reapplying for CUET

New Delhi: Several Delhi University students who chose Tamil and Telugu as non-major subjects in the BA programme course last year are struggling to learn the languages claiming they are yet to be taught the basics. Some first-year students from Venkateswara College and Miranda House -- the first batch to be admitted to the varsity through CUET -- say they opted for the course thinking they would be taught the languages from scratch.

However, as the syllabus is quite advanced, they now fear that they would not be able to clear the upcoming exams and are considering sitting for the Common University Entrance Test-UG (CUET-UG) afresh. Students who opted for BA programme (Political Science+Tamil) and (Political Science+Telugu) at Sri Venkateswara College have urged both the college and the university several times to change their subjects to either Hindi or Sanskrit but the pleas have been turned down every time. In its response, the university said the students should have seen the syllabus before opting for the course and asserted that the the chosen combination cannot be altered.

According to the New Education Policy (NEP), students have been given the choice to study different languages and they are a compulsory subject. A professor at the Department of Modern Indian Languages said the issue is not limited to Telugu and Tamil languages and claimed that students who have taken up other regional languages like Bengali, Oria and Sindhi are also facing the same problem.

"The students do not know the language and they are being taught literature that is of advanced level," she said on the condition of anonymity. She held the university responsible for this "fiasco" as many students' future is at risk. "There are several languages whose teachers are not available. There is no single teacher in the varsity for Malayalam or Sindhi or Kannada? There is only one teacher for Gujarati. How are students supposed to learn a new language within a semester?" she said. Earlier, the eligibility criteria for taking up a language as a minor discipline required students to have studied it up to class 8.