This is the first year that AICTE has permitted engineering colleges to offer B.Tech programmes in 11 regional languages.
The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has permitted fourteen engineering colleges across eight states to collectively admit over 1,000 students in undergraduate programmes, who will be taught in regional languages starting the new academic year. The decision is in tune with provisions of the National Education Policy (NEP).
At least half of the engineering colleges — four from Uttar Pradesh, two from Rajasthan and one each from Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand — will teach in Hindi. The remaining colleges — from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu — will offer the programme in Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and Tamil, respectively.
Vice President of India, M Venkaiah Naidu also expressed his elation over the decision. "The Vice President, Shri M Venkaiah Naidu has welcomed the decision of 14 engineering colleges across 8 states to offer courses in regional languages in select branches from the new academic year.", read VP Secretariat's tweet.
The VP even desired more engineering colleges & other technical education institutions to offer courses in regional languages.
This is the first year that AICTE — in line with provisions of the new National Education Policy (NEP) that calls for education in one’s mother tongue as far as possible — has permitted engineering colleges to offer B.Tech programmes in 11 regional languages (Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam and Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi and Oriya).
Last year in November, the Union Education Ministry had announced that they would push for technical education, especially engineering, in regional languages, starting from the 2021-22 academic year. The Ministry had also indicated that some of the top engineering schools such as the IITs and NITs might be among the first to implement this.
The technical education regulator’s approval has been granted for select branches — most of them are for computer science, followed by electrical and electronics engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and information technology.
