No need for IIT entrance exam in local languages: Madras High Court

New Delhi: A bench of Madras High Court (which had Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T S Sivagnanam as its members) has dismissed the petition which sought IIT entrance exam to be conducted in vernacular or regional languages.

The petitioner R Ovia wanted the Central Government and other concerned authorities to make provisions to conduct the JEE exam in local languages such as Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu.  According to Ovia, students from rural areas often face a language problem when they prepare for the exam. It could help them if the exam was conducted in 32 languages that he said were most popular in India.

The Central Government (in its reply to the petition) stated that the medium of instruction at IITs is English. If the students are not proficient in the language, they will not be able to study at IITs and hence, clearing the exams will be a futile exercise for them.

The MHC judges said, “As per the verdict of the Supreme Court in 1990, the institutions must have the right to decide whether an entrance exam should be held in a single language, two languages or multiple languages.”