Nepali language for SBI test

Vivek Chhetri, TT, Darjeeling, April 22: The State Bank of India has included Nepali and five other languages in the list of official regional languages for the recruitment examinations of junior associates and junior agricultural associates in the state.

Earlier, the only official regional language for the test in the state was Bengali.

Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson, SBI, issued a notification saying: "It has been decided to revise the list of official regional languages of some states wherein several official regional languages have been added." Nepali, Urdu, Hindi, Santhali, Oriya and Punjabi have been listed in Bengal.

According to the earlier rules, one has to take online preliminary exams. Those who qualify take the main test. The questions were in English and Hindi. Aspirants with Class X marksheets saying they had studied a local language (the only one listed was Bengali) could get a chance to appear for interview. Those who could not produce the document had to take a local language test - in this case Bengali.

This year, the last date of online registration has been extended from April 25 to 28.

Darjeeling MP S.S. Ahluwalia had written to Union finance minister Arun Jaitley and Bhattacharya demanding addition of local languages.

There are 15,000 posts in the country. Bengal has 2,000.