Pali, Sanskrit attracting Board students

ALLAHABAD: Regional languages like Assamese, Malyalam, Oriya, Gujarati and Telugu among others are finding no takers in the Intermediate and High School exams conducted by UP Board while traditional and ancient languages like Pali and Sanskrit along with Arabic are attracting the students in the state.
This year in class XII, none of the 29.19 lakh students in the state had applied for the Assamese and Oriya subjects showing disinterest towards regional languages.Further, only one student had registered for the Malyalam language but he failed to appear in the same while a single student had appeared and passed in the Gujarati language subject. Two students each, had sat for and cleared the Nepali and Kannada subjects.
In Tamil subject, three students gave the exams while only four students had appeared for Telugu across the state.
In contrast, 140 students had registered for the ancient language of Pali. In the exam, 126 of them appeared and 119 cleared the exams registering a 94.44% of pass percentage. Similar is the case of Sanskrit language where 12.88 lakh students had applied for the exams and 11.61 lakh were declared successful. In Arabic, 156 students had taken the subject and out of them 155 successfully qualified in it.
Persian is another language where students had shown interest. At least 85 students had given the exams and out of them 79 passed the exams.
In class X exams also, the same scenario was witnessed where only one student out of a total of 30.55 lakh students in the state had appeared for Malayalam subject. Similarly, three students appeared for Nepali subject while only one was able to qualify it, two qualified in Kannada subject, three in Tamil and five in Bengali. One student had appeared for Oriya but was unable to qualify it.
In High School also, students excelled in traditional language. At least 285 appeared for Pali language while 276 qualified it. Similarly, 7.95 lakh student had appeared for Sanskrit and 6.29 lakh had qualified for it. In Arabic also, 280 out of 310 students had qualified the subject. At least 166 students out of 257 students had qualified for the Persian exams.
“At a time when the students are selecting traditional language like Pali, Sanskrit or Arabic, it is not understandable as to why they are not opting to the regional language,” said Amarnath Verma, secretary, UP Board.
He said it is a fact that several of the students here later learn regional languages such as Gujarati among others to pass competitive exams conducted by the Public Service Commission of the state concerned.