The NEET which is mandatory to get admission in medical colleges can be currently taken in Hindi, English and eight other regional languages.
In a major relief to thousands of students studying Science in Urdu medium, the Supreme Court (SC) has directed the central government to include Urdu as one of the languages in which students can take National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET), from the next academic session 2018-19.
The NEET which is mandatory to get admission in medical colleges can be currently taken in Hindi, English and eight other regional languages. After the apex court’s direction, Urdu will also be included as a language from the next year onward.
In addition to this, the court has also directed that students seeking admission in Unani, which is actually a medical discipline taught in Urdu language, take NEET. However those students will not be able to use Urdu as a medium of taking the exam this year.
A bench comprising justice Dipak Misra, A M Khanwilkar and M M Shantanagoudar told the petitioner, who had sought a direction for making Urdu as a medium for NEET 2017 scheduled on May 7, that it would be technically impossible for the government to include Urdu this year.
“We direct the Union of India to include Urdu as a language in NEET examination from academic session 2018-19 onwards,” the bench said.
The Students Islamic Organization of India (SIO) had moved the apex court demanding Urdu be made a medium of the exam, just as NEET is conducted in ten other languages - Hindi, English, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya,
Bengali, Assamese, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada. There are three applications in the matter, of which two were disposed off by the apex court’s order on Thursday. A third application, which submitted that exclusion of Urdu by the Centre amounted to culture bias, will be heard in August.
“As the language is associated with Muslim, the government functionaries are prejudiced and biased and have deliberately excluded the Urdu language as medium for the NEET exams,” the affidavit filed by SIO national secretary Thouseef Ahamad said.
Maharashtra tops in urdu
In terms of number of people speaking a language, Urdu ranks Sixth in India as the per the Census report.
A large number of students study Science in Urdu medium for their Class XI and XII exams.
In Maharashtra, the number of Urdu medium students is the highest at 11,000, followed by Andhra Pradesh and Telangana..
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