Pune college prepping up to offer engineering education in Marathi

The data shared by Sahasrabudhe states while most of the colleges have proposed to start a batch in computer science, there are proposals for electrical, mechanical and civil engineering as well, with some colleges proposing two batches in different streams. However, materializing of the proposals is yet to be seen. College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) is the other college in contention from Maharashtra. When contacted, CoEP director BB Ahuja said that while they had proposed to start a batch in Marathi this year, the decision was deferred as they wanted to be well prepared before taking on a new initiative.

Ahuja further added,“There were concerns regarding the availability of books. However, the decision has only been deferred for this year. We will again take it up next year.” Talking about the initiative, GN Kulkarni, director of PCCOE, said, “Our board of governors has approved the decision to start an undergraduate course in Computer Engineering in Marathi. We have applied to AICTE to allow intake of 60 students so that we can start the batch this year itself. We hope to get a positive reply in 10-15 days. We would also need to get a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the Directorate of Technical Education and Savitribai Phule Pune University.”

Meanwhile, the institute is yet to conduct a survey to find if any students in the existing batches would have opted for Marathi medium had the option been available to them. “We generally do such surveys when we think of starting a new course on our own. The call to start a batch in a regional language came from AICTE and I am sure they must have conducted a survey,” said Kulkarni. AICTE, in a news conference in March, had quoted from a survey covering 5,000 engineering students studying in second to final year wherein 42% had said that they would have opted to learn in their mother tongue if the option was available.