New Delhi | In a landmark decision, the Ministry of Home Affairs has approved the conduct of constable (general duty) examination for Central Armed Police Forces in 13 regional languages, in addition to Hindi and English.

The historic decision has been taken at the initiative of Union Home Minister Amit Shah to give impetus to the participation of local youths in the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) and encourage regional languages, an official statement said.

The CAPFs are the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and the National Security Guard (NSG).

"In a landmark decision under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, (the) Ministry of Home Affairs has approved conducting constable (general duty) examination for CAPFs in 13 regional languages, in addition to Hindi and English," it said.

In addition to Hindi and English, the question paper will be set in 13 regional languages -- Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Odia, Urdu, Punjabi, Manipuri and Konkani.

The announcement comes days after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin wrote to Shah, calling him to include Tamil as a language for the written exam in the recruitment for CRPF personnel.

In his letter, Stalin said that in the notification for the CRPF recruitment written exam, it was mentioned that the test could be taken in English and Hindi.