Students opting Tamil to take NEET doubles since 2017

The number of students opting to take the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) in Tamil significantly increased this year to reach more than twice the number of students recorded in 2017.

The data released by the National Testing Agency (NTA) showed that the entrance test, conducted in 11 languages, including English, saw a slight increase in the number of students opting to take the examination in Hindi and some other regional languages this time.

As a result, the number of students opting to take the test in English this year went down by nearly 1% as compared to that in 2017 even as over 12 lakh students registered for taking the test in this language.

The NTA data pertained to the number of students who registered for the entrance test, not those actually taking the test.

Of over 15 lakh students registered for the test, a total of 3,14,407 students opted to take the test in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Urdu and Hindi language.

The number of students who registered for taking the test in Tamil reached 31,239 (2.06%) this time against 15,206 students (1.33%) in 2017.

While just 712 students had opted to take the test in Kannada in 2017, as many as 1,017 students preferred to opt the language for the test this year.

The number of students opting Marathi went up to reach 2,305 this year from 978 in 2017. As many as 700 students opted Odia to take the test this year against 452 in 2017.

As many as 59,395 students opted Gujarati for taking the test this year. In 2017, the number of such students was pegged at 47,853.

The number of students taking the test in Bengali went down to reach 31,239 this year from 34,417 in 2017.

Over 1.79 lakh (11.84%) students opted to take the test in Hindi this year. In 2017, a total of 1,20,663 students had opted for Hindi to take the NEET.