Conduct JEE in Punjabi too: Bajwa

Punjab higher education and languages minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa on Sunday demanded that the joint engineering entrance examination (main) should be held

Punjab higher education and languages minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa on Sunday demanded that the joint engineering entrance examination (main) should be held in Punjabi and other regional languages too.

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In a letter to Union human resource development minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, Bajwa said the admission test was initially conducted in English, Hindi and Gujarati and on the demand of the governments of different states, the Union ministry has decided that from 2021, this entrance test would be conducted in Assamese, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Urdu, Marathi, Oriya and Telugu.

He said it’s very unfortunate that Punjabi has not been included in this list which is a matter of clear discrimination towards the language.

The test is conducted for admissions to the country’s leading engineering colleges and in IIT institutes and architectural courses.

Earlier, the test was conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), but the ministry of human resource development now conducts this test through the National Testing Agency (NTA), he said.

Bajwa said that if Punjabi language is not included in the list of languages of this test, hundreds of students of Punjab would not be able to take admissions in prestigious engineering colleges of the country.