Pradhan seeks inclusion of Odia language in NEET

Bhubaneswar: While blaming the Odisha government failing to protect the interest of the students, Union Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday urged the Health ministry to include Odia language as a medium of examination in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET).

In a letter to Health minister JP Nadda, Pradhan requested to reconsider the decision and provide an additional option to the students to appear in either English or Odiya in the NEET examination.

“This will ensure meritorious students from the state are not adversely affected on account of their lack of expertise in English,” said Pradhan. He, however, blamed the state government for failing to protect the interest of the students in the state.

“The exclusion of the Odia language is solely attributable to the omission of the state government that has failed to protect the interest of the students of Odisha. Though the decision to this effect was taken by your Ministry through an elaborate consultative process, the government of Odisha did not avail of the opportunities in articulating the aspirations of the students from Odisha,” said the Petroleum minister.

“To cover up their failure in this regard, the state government has resorted to raising the matter with the Central Government at this stage and thereby, misleading the people of the State,” he added.

Notably, the central government has included six regional languages as a medium of examination in NEET. Besides Hindi and English, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu have been included.