If the Joint Entrance Examination can be held in Gujarati, why not in Bengali, chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said she had asked the Centre.

She was addressing students at an online programme organised by the state government to felicitate Madhyamik and Higher Secondary examinees. “This year, too, you had to appear for the JEE in English and Hindi. But we have written to the Centre if the exam can be held in Gujarati, why not in Bengali? It should be allowed in regional languages.”

The language barrier leaves village students at a disadvantage. “There are many good students in villages who know both English and Bengali… if they can write the JEE in Bengali they can express themselves better,” she said.

In 2020, the questions were in English, Hindi and Gujarati, according to the JEE (Main) information bulletin on the site4 of the National Testing Agency, which conducts the exam.

The NTA has said the JEE (Main) advisory committee has decided to drop question papers in Gujarati from January 2021. The question papers will be available only in Hindi and English, The Telegraph had reported.

The NTA started holding the exam in 2019, taking over from the CBSE.

The CBSE had in 2014 added Urdu, Marathi and Gujarati apart from English and Hindi to the medium of exams. In 2016, it dropped Urdu and Marathi.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had raised the issue last year asking the Centre in a tweet why Gujarati was allowed for JEE (Main) and not other regional languages.

The number of students in Bengal who took the JEE (Main) this year during the pandemic saw a significant drop.