Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Wednesday that the Centre has recently decided to hold a government job recruitment test, which will be conducted by the SSC, in 15 languages so that the country's youth do not miss out. This historic decision will encourage local youth participation and regional languages, he said at the 14th Hindi Consultative Committee meeting of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pensions.

"It was recently decided to conduct the government job test in 15 Indian languages so that no young person in the country misses out on a job opportunity," said Singh, Minister of State for Personnel.

In addition to Hindi and English, the question paper will be set in 13 regional languages, he said, referring to the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) recruitment test. These are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Odia, Urdu, Punjabi, Manipuri (also Meiti), and Konkani.

"Notable progress has been made in the last more than nine years under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership to promote Indian regional languages besides the official language Hindi," the minister said.

According to him, the decision will result in lakhs of aspirants taking the exam in their mother tongue/regional language, improving their selection prospects.

Singh stated that there have been repeated requests from various states to hold SSC exams in languages other than English and Hindi.

"Among other things, the government appointed an expert committee to look into this aspect (review of the Commission's examination scheme and syllabus)." Despite the fact that the policy was initiated with the Official Language Rules in 1976, significant progress has only been made in the last five and a half years," he added.

The Staff Selection Commission recently unveiled the format for candidates to write their examinations in 15 languages, according to Singh, and plans are in the works to allow written tests in all 22 scheduled languages.

"The JEE, NEET and UGC exams are also being conducted in 12 of our languages," he said.

Calling for adoption of common terminology from English and other languages, Singh said Madhya Pradesh could take the lead in introducing medical education in Hindi by adopting words such as "nucleus" and "amoeba" verbatim rather than wasting time and resources in trying to cook up a translation, according to a Personnel Ministry statement.