Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. (Express file photo)The Kerala government on Monday said the question papers of all examinations conducted by state government recruitment board Public Service Commission (PSC) would be made available in Malayalam also.
After deliberations with PSC officials, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced the decision — a long-standing demand in Kerala.
“PSC has been directed to give question papers in Malayalam for all exams including the Kerala Administrative Service. To address the practical difficulties that may crop up during implementation, a meeting of all Vice-Chancellors would be convened. Many technical words do not have an equivalent translation in Malayalam, and exams based on technical words would face practical issues. A committee would be appointed to look into this problem and to prepare a dictionary of technical words,” Vijayan said.
The CM said that in order to address the concerns of linguistic minorities, the demand for preparing question papers in Kannada and Tamil has been put forward to the PSC. The Kerala government is not against studying any language, but that should not be by trampling down Malayalam, he said.
At present, PSC gives question papers in Malayalam too for exams which have fixed eligibility up to Class 12. But for exams held for higher posts, which have graduation or above as the basic educational qualification, question papers are given only in English. This has been reckoned as a discrimination towards applicants who have studied in Malayalam medium.
Government intervention to make question papers in Malayalam came in the wake of an ongoing protest of cultural leaders for the last 19 days in front of the PSC headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram.
After assuming office, the CPI(M) declared Malayalam as the administrative language and all communications from offices were made in Malayalam.
