Rajya Sabha was adjourned twice today as Opposition members created a ruckus
The row over the civil services exam intensified today, with the government sticking to its stand, student protesters threatening to boycott the exams on August 24 and the Opposition creating a ruckus in Parliament, demanding a debate on the subject.
The government -- which said yesterday that the marks in the English comprehension test of the Civil Services Aptitude Test, or CSAT, will not be considered for grades or merit -- is not ready to give in to any further demand. "The government had made its stand clear yesterday," said home minister Rajnath Singh.
The Opposition, which maintains the CSAT is creating a linguistic apartheid of sorts, sought a debate in Rajya Sabha, forcing two adjournments -- the second one was on till noon.
Demanding that a joint parliamentary committee be set up to resolve the matter, senior Congress leader Pramod Tiwari said the government is deliberately trying to create a rift between the Hindi and English speaking population.
Leaders from states demanded that the CSAT be held in regional languages. senior Congress leader MS Gill maintained, "If translation is done in Hindi, it should be done in all other languages".
Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agarwal said the government was trying to defuse the matter and demanded that the Prime Minister, who has returned from his trip to Nepal, respond to the issue.
"We can't spend every day discussing the issue. We are trying to find a solution," said BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. "We want to avoid language wars," added senior BJP leader and finance minister Arun Jaitley.
Aam Aadmi Party leader Yogendra Yadav, who met the protesters at Jantar Mantar yesterday, told NDTV, "They (the protesters) are not against English. They were talking about the unnecessary stress on English, in the sense that even the Hindi portion of the paper is set using a translating tool which is of such poor quality that it doesn't retain any nuance of the question."