AICTE-All India Council for Technical Education has allowed colleges to offer engineering courses in 8 regional languages. Colleges can now offer engineering courses in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malyalam, Gujarati and Kannada.

The aim is to impart education to the students in their mother tongue. This will especially help students from the tribal areas and they will be able to realize their dreams. It may be noted that many students were not able to pursue the engineering for fear of the medium of studies which has been English. Countries like China, Germany, France, Russia and Japan use their official language to impart the entire education.

AICTE Chairman Anil Sahastrabuddhe said that students can grasp the fundamentals better in their mother tongues. As informed, the option has been introduced in line with New Education policy wherein applications were invited from colleges.

The colleges have to follow stringent conditions as put forward by the apex body. The colleges need to be accredited by the National Board of Accreditation and should be among top-ranked in their states. They can start the course with a batch size of 30 or 60. They would also have an option of appointing teachers who can teach in the regional languages or train the existing teachers.

AICTE had conducted a survey in Tamil Nadu regarding the language for the courses wherein 42 percent of the students chose mother tongue over English.