Common University Entrance Test (CUET) to be held in 12 vernacular languages from 2022, says MoE

From next year, the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) will be held in vernacular languages, says the Ministry of Education. Dr Subhash Sarkar, Minister of State, Ministry of Education had said this in the parliament while answering a question posed by AIADMK MP A Vijayakumar.

CUET, which is the entrance examination to enrol into central universities, will be held in Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Tamil, Punjabi, Telugu and Urdu from the next academic year. The minister also said that NEET (UG) 2021, JEE (Main) 2021 and All India Sainik School Entrance Examination (AISSEE) 2021 for Class VI were held in vernacular languages.

Prior to this, the UGC on November 26 has asked the Vice-Chancellors of Central Universities to take appropriate measures to conduct the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) that is to be organised by the National Testing Agency (NTA). Earlier this year, the UGC had notified that it was delaying the idea to implement the CUET by one year due to COVID-19.

In a letter to all the vice-chancellors of 45 Central Universities, UGC joint secretary Jitendra K Tripathi wrote that it "was resolved that the common entrance for UG and PG may be conducted from the academic session 2022-23" and that for PhD admissions, NET scores will be used "wherever feasible." Recently, the Supreme Court had asked the National Testing Agency to conduct the national science aptitude test under the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojna (KVPY) fellowship in 13 vernacular languages from next year.