Minority Community Students to Move Apex Court over Exclusion of Urdu from NEET

Reacting to the move of the Central Government to disallow Urdu as a medium for the NEET-UG examination, a Muslim students organisation strongly protested on Thursday, 2nd February 2017, in Mumbai and termed it is as unconstitutional and a discrimination against the Urdu-medium students of the country.

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Mohammad Ali Sheikh, a senior associate of Students Islamic Organisation of India, while addressing a press conference in Mumbai said that they are vehemently against the Central Government's unjust move to exclude the Urdu language from NEET-UG 2017. They are are going to file a petition in the Supreme Court of India.

He further said that around 20,000 seats of medical, allied courses and the paramedical courses from MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BUMS, BHMS both in government and private colleges across the state are now out of reach for the Urdu-medium students. The state government has already notified that instead of State Common Entrance Test, admissions to these courses will be done through NEET-UG 2017.

Students from Urdu medium were forced to appear for the examination with an unfamiliar language in which they have not studied Chemistry, Physics and Biology. Now NEET is the only door to medical education in India. The government has virtually closed all doors for these deserving candidates of Urdu medium who planned to pursue medical education.

Also Read: NEET-UG 2017 to be conducted in Ten Languages, Urdu Remains Excluded

Bowing to the pressure, government included Oriya and Kannada in the list of the language whereas it singled out Urdu. Such a move would again reduce the education opportunities of the students from the minority community, he added.

Sheikh further said that in the state of Maharashtra alone, there are around 168 Urdu-medium junior science colleges and more than 15,000 Urdu-medium students appear for 12^th Science examination every year.