The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has announced that 218 engineering books which are for first-year students of undergraduate and diploma programmes have been translated in 11 regional languages and reviewed by 226 authors.

Taking to Twitter, AICTE wrote, “Now language won’t be a barrier for students who aspire to be an engineer.”

Earlier this year in July, the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had said that 14 engineering colleges in eight states of the country will offer BTech courses in five regional languages. Offering education in regional languages was one of the major recommendations of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. This means that the BTech programmes will now be taught in 11 regional languages. These will include Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam, Telugu, Assamese, Punjabi and Odia. Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu had already welcomed the decision of AICTE.

The education ministry had also appointed two committees to study and examine the feasibility of engineering courses in regional languages. However, the concept is not new as Chennai’s Anna University already offers civil and mechanical engineering courses in Tamil across 11 colleges. Students studying in these colleges have the option to write their exams in either English or Tamil.

Previously, in a couple of his speeches and addresses, Prime Minister Modi has also stressed the need to uplift the mother tongue. He also emphasised that education should also be offered in regional languages. Therefore, AICTE and UGC had conducted a series of webinars to discuss the ways of strengthening Indian languages.