Ranchi, Feb. 22: Here’s good news for students of linguistic minority schools.

From this year, they will have the choice of taking the intermediate examination in their mother tongue — Bengali, Urdu and Oriya. Hitherto, the students had to take the tests either in English or Hindi.

The exam, conducted by Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC), begins on April 2. A total of 3.2 lakh examinees are set to appear this year, of whom more than 5,000 are from linguistic minority schools, said Ashutosh Prasad, officer on special duty, JAC.

Speaking to The Telegraph, JAC chairperson Laxmi Singh said they got the nod from the state government to allow the examinees write the papers in their mother tongue as many of them difficult found it difficult to answer in English or Hindi.

“We received a directive from the state HRD department on February 14. We are just following orders of the state government, which has ensured supply of textbooks in linguistic minority schools,” he said.

The chairperson added that intermediate students speaking in Urdu, Bengali and Oriya were unable to comprehend Hindi and English. “So they did not perform well despite studying hard,” she said.

OSD Prasad added the council would publish advertisements in a couple of days to apprise the examinees of the new rule.

Last year, students of linguistic minority institutions had hit the capital’s streets in protest, urging the government to allow them to write the intermediate test in their mother tongue.

According to Singh, both matriculation and intermediate exams are starting late this year due to the ongoing census and the 34th National Games. “We were directed not to conduct the examinations before March 15. So we deferred the dates to April,” she said.