NTA responds to Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee's criticism over JEE (Mains) in Gujarati medium

NEW DELHI: The National Testing Agency clarified that it included Gujarati as a medium for the Joint Entrance Examination (Mains) exam because other than the state of Gujarat, none of the other states approached the NTA to provide the JEE (Main) question paper in any other Indian national language.
NTA's clarification came a day after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee criticised the Centre for adding Gujarati as a medium for JEE (Mains) and asked why all other regional languages, including Bengali, should not be included as well.
The Central Board of Secondary Education had added Urdu, Marathi and Gujarati in 2014 to the exam medium. However, in 2016, it dropped Urdu and Marathi but continued with Gujarati apart from Hindi and English. The National Testing Agency (NTA) took over the exam in 2019 from the CBSE.
The NTA in a statement released on Thursday said that in 2013 a request was sent to all states asking if they wanted to admit students to state engineering colleges through JEE (Mains).

Only the Gujarat State agreed to admit their candidates in State Engineering Colleges of Gujarat through JEE (Main) and requested that the JEE (Main) paper be made available in Gujarati language. Then later in 2014 Maharashtra also opted for admitting the Engineering candidates in the state engineering colleges through JEE (Main) and requested to provide the question paper in Marathi and Urdu.
However, in 2016 Maharashtra withdrew the admission and subsequently translation of question papers in Marathi and Urdu was stopped.
"However, the translation of JEE (Main) question paper in Gujarati language continued on the request of Gujarat State. None of the other States have approached NTA to provide the JEE (Main) question paper in any other Indian National Language," said the agency in the statement.
TMC supremo Banerjee had said on Wednesday that unless the issue (of including all regional languages) was decided "gracefully", there would be strong protests all around as sentiments of people who speak other regional languages would be deeply hurt due to "this injustice."
Slamming Banerjee's criticism, BJP' National General Secretary , Kailash Vijayvargiya, in a tweet referred to the Bengal CM as "divider didi" and said that Bengal never requested the exam to be held in Bengali.
The notification of JEE 2020 states that candidates will have to opt language of question paper while filling up the online application form.
For all "centre cities", the languages of question papers will be in English and Hindi. But for the "centre cities" in Gujarat, Daman and Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli, the languages should be English, Hindi and Gujarati.
Incidentally, Banerjee's nephew and party MP Abhishek Banerjee had also observed on his Twitter handle that it was "unconstitutional" to set the JEE question papers only in English, Hindi and Gujarati.
(With inputs from PTI)