In a major development, the Education Ministry has stated that the premier engineering institutions in the country — Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) will start offering engineering courses in mother tongue from next academic year, reports Business Today.

The decision, in line with the latest education policy, was reportedly taken at a high-level review meeting chaired by Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal on Thursday.

"A seminal decision was made to start technical education, especially engineering courses, imparting education in mother tongue (and this) will be opened from next academic year. A few IITs and NITs are being shortlisted for the same," a senior ministry official stated.

As per The Print report, a senior official stated that to begin with, engineering courses in Hindi will start in IIT Banaras Hindu University (BHU), and more institutes will be shortlisted in the coming days.

It should be noted the New Education Policy 2020 envisages that wherever possible the medium of instruction in schools until Grade V -- preferably until Grade VIII -- should be the mother tongue or the local or regional language.

Notably, the National Testing Agency (NTA) had last month announced its decision to conduct the JEE (Main) in nine regional languages, apart from Hindi and English from 2021. However, the IITs are yet to take up the matter so far on whether the JEE (Advanced) will also be offered in regional language.