Salt Lake: Higher Secondary (HS) question papers will have a Hindi version from next year.

HS questions in all subjects are at present set in Bengali and English. All examinees are provided questions in both the languages and it is up to them to decide which version they use for answering the questions.

Students of Hindi-medium schools are allowed to write their answers in Hindi but have to refer to the questions in English or Bengali.

Inderpal Kaur, the principal of Seth Soorajmull Jalan Balika Vidyalaya, a Hindi-medium HS school for girls in central Calcutta, welcomed the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education's move.

"This was a big problem for all Hindi-medium students, especially those who are weak in English. Most students of Hindi-medium institutions refer to the English version for answering questions. Sometimes this affects their performance. Our students are expected to perform better in the exam next year," Kaur said.

Nearly 45,000 examinees from Hindi-medium schools are expected to write the HS exam in March 2018. Nearly eight lakh examinees will write the HS test.

"It had been a long-standing demand of Hindi-medium schools. The council is trying to set questions in Hindi along with Bengali and English in as many subjects as possible in the 2018 exam," council president Mahua Das told Metro.

"In 2018, we may not be able to cover all the subjects (non-language) because of lack of time. But the council will set questions in Hindi in all the papers by 2019," Das said. The council is yet to finalise the subjects in which questions will be set in Hindi in the 2018 exam.

The HS exam is conducted in 57 subjects, including several languages such as Bengali, English, Hindi, Urdu and Nepali.

The demand for questions in Hindi had first surfaced in the late 1990s during the erstwhile Left regime, a source in the school education department said.

"Similar appeals from students and teachers of Hindi-medium schools have reached the government even during the present Trinamul regime. The government has decided to implement the move from next year as it does not want further delay," said the source in the school education department.

The principal of a Hindi- medium school for boys said the students would have benefited more if the decision had been taken a little earlier.

"The selection tests in Class XII are already over in most schools. The students have written the selection tests using English question papers as the decision was conveyed to the schools only this week," the principal said.