New Delhi, March 3: The Supreme Court today sought the response of regulators and the CBSE on a plea to allow Urdu in the National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical and dental courses alongside the eight languages already permitted.

A bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and R. Banumathi issued the notices to the Medical Council of India (MCI), Dental Council of India (DCI) and the CBSE, which conducts the NEET.

At present, students can write the NEET - made a mandatory medical entrance test by the Supreme Court last year - in English, Hindi and six other regional languages. These are Bengali, Telugu, Assamese, Gujarati, Marathi and Tamil.

The Students Islamic Organisation (SIO), which filed the PIL through counsel Ravindra S. Garia, complained that the present system smacked of discrimination against students of the Urdu medium.

In terms of number of speakers, Urdu ranks sixth in India according to the 2010 Census, the petition said.

The plea added that a large number of students study science in the Urdu medium for the Class XI and XII exams, and that NCERT textbooks for these classes are available in Urdu.

Urdu has also been accorded official language status in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi, the plea said. Excluding Urdu from the NEET violates the right to equality, it added.