Mamata demands inclusion of all regional language including Bengali in JEE

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday questioned the inclusion of Gujarati language in Joint Entrance Examination (Main) exams and demanded that the paper should be conducted in other regional languages too, including Bengali.

"I do not have any problem with the JEE Main being conducted in the Gujarati language. I love all languages and understand Gujarati as well. All regional languages should be added to the JEE. Our Education Minister had also written to National Testing Agency (NTA) on this issue to conduct the test in Bengali," she said in a press conference here.

This comes after it was announced that the JEE exam will be conducted in English, Hindi and Gujarati languages by the NTA from this year. However, the NTA had clarified that no other state than Gujarat had approached it for the inclusion of regional language in JEE.

Hitting out at the Centre, Banerjee alleged that the government is doing discrimination towards regional languages accept one or two.

She said that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) will protest against the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and regional language issue on November 11.

Earlier in the day, the NTA said that in 2013, 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. Therefore, the translation in Marathi and Urdu language was stopped.

"However, the translation of JEE (Main) question paper in the Gujarati language continued on the request of the 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.