Madurai MP Su. Venkatesan from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has written a letter to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Wednesday, questioning the need for mandating the knowledge of Hindi as a requirement for the recruitment for non-teaching posts in National Institutes of Technology (NITs).
Last Thursday, the National Testing Agency (NTA) issued a public notice regarding the conduct of common recruitment examination for filling the vacancies for non-teaching posts in eight cadres in nine NITs.
Mr. Venkatesan pointed out that the syllabus for the examination included the testing of English and Hindi. “In addition to the testing of candidate’s understanding of the English and Hindi Languages, it’s vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, synonyms, antonyms and its correct usage etc. would also be tested,” the syllabus mentioned.
According to Mr. Venkatesan, the weightage given to the “Test of English and Hindi” was 20% for some cadre and 30% for some other cadre. Arguing that the weightage was significant and would play a crucial role in the selection, he said, “Insisting Hindi test for all the candidates is injustice to the candidates from non Hindi-speaking States and the same will provide undue advantage for candidates from Hindi-speaking States”.
“Moreover, it is against the Official Language Implementation Rules 1974 rules [sic] also which categorised the States in to three (A, B and C) and exempted Tamil Nadu altogether from its ambit,” he contended. He requested the Minister to intervene and advise NTA to respect the linguistic diversity of India and remove Hindi from the syllabus for the examination.
