With the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) giving approval to six more institutes to teach in regional languages, a total 20 engineering colleges across 10 states will now offer select undergraduate courses in six regional languages from the academic year starting this month, officials said.
In line with the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 that calls for imparting education in mother tongue, the AICTE, for the first time in July, granted permission to 14 colleges across the country to offer select engineering courses in regional languages.
Eight of these 14 colleges will offer BTech courses in Hindi. Others will provide the option of pursuing technical education in Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu.
AICTE chairperson Anil Dattatraya Sahasrabudhe said that colleges from Karnataka and Haryana have secured permission from the council to teach some courses in Hindi and Kannada. “Four colleges from Karnataka and two from Haryana approached the AICTE seeking permission to Kannada and Hindi, respectively, on the existing seats. Now 20 colleges in the country will offer engineering courses in six regional languages,” he said.
Sahasrabudhe said that colleges from Gujarat and Odisha have also approached the AICTE seeking permission to teach in regional languages. “There are still doubts among students regarding engineering courses in regional languages. We are expecting that the number will increase after these 20 colleges will successfully start teaching in regional languages,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}Sahasrabudhe said that colleges from Gujarat and Odisha have also approached the AICTE seeking permission to teach in regional languages. “There are still doubts among students regarding engineering courses in regional languages. We are expecting that the number will increase after these 20 colleges will successfully start teaching in regional languages,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}Meanwhile, the admission process is on in engineering colleges across the country following the announcement of the JEE-Main results in September. The new academic session will begin in the majority of the states from this month.
Among the institutes that will offer courses in regional languages this year, are Graphic Era (deemed to be University) in Dehradun, Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering in Pune, Technique Polytechnic Institute in Hooghly district of West Bengal, and Pranveer Singh Institute of Technology in Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), among others.
To meet the requirement, the AICTE has almost completed the translation work for first year students, officials added. Apart from books, the council has also translated several Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), free online courses, and 2531 online lectures available on the government’s SWAYAM portal.